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India Pickle

A pickle made by pickling fresh flowers with salt, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,776 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

India Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the flowers

  1. In July, pick large fresh flowers and wash them clean.

  2. Place the flowers in a pot and cover them with coarse sea salt for three days.

  3. Drain the flowers and lay them out to dry in the sun, turning them until they are almost brown, which may take several days.

Prepare the other ingredients

  1. Prepare whole ginger, horseradish slices, peeled garlic, whole long pepper, peeled shallots, and onions by soaking them in saltwater overnight.

Pickle and store

  1. Boil enough vinegar to cover the ingredients, adding 1 ounce of pale turmeric for every 2 quarts.

  2. In jars, layer the dried flowers and other ingredients, then pour the boiling vinegar over them.

  3. Cover the jars and let them sit overnight.

  4. Boil the pickle again and repeat this process for a third day.

  5. Finally, fill the jars with the liquid, cover them tightly with bladder and white leather, and store in a dry place.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Ginger + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Horseradish + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Shallot + turmerictop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together282 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Horseradish + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together437 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Large fresh flowers
Form the main body of the pickle and absorb the salt and vinegar flavours.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the flowers, softening and preserving them before pickling.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its sharp, tangy character.
Pale turmeric
Adds a bright yellow colour and an earthy, mild bitterness to the vinegar.

The step that matters

Drying the flowers in the sun. Turning them until almost brown takes several days; drying too little leaves excess moisture that can spoil the pickle, while the salt-cured flowers must be fully dried before they go into the vinegar.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (horseradish, garlic, pepper, shallot, onion, vinegar, turmeric):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against horseradish, garlic, pepper, shallot, onion, vinegar, turmeric. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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