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Garlic Pickle

A pickled garlic dish preserved in a spiced vinegar brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Garlic Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the garlic

  1. Break the garlic bulb into cloves, peel them, and cut each clove in half.

  2. Boil enough water to cover the garlic and add salt to create a strong brine.

  3. Pour the boiling brine over the garlic in an earthenware pan and let it cool.

  4. Peel the garlic cloves from the brine and place them in dry bottles or jars, leaving 1 inch of space at the top.

Make the spiced vinegar and fill the jars

  1. In a saucepan, combine vinegar with the spices and boil for 20 minutes.

  2. Strain the spiced vinegar over the garlic in the jars.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Garlic + horseradishtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together719 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Garlic + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Garlic + gingertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Garlic
Provides the main flavour and firm texture that holds up during long pickling.
Vinegar
Acidity preserves the garlic and gives it a sharp, tangy taste.
Coarse sea salt
Forms a strong brine that draws out moisture and seasons the cloves before pickling.
Whole black pepper
Adds a warm, pungent aroma to the spiced vinegar.
Mustard seeds
Contribute a sharp, pungent flavour that infuses into the vinegar.

The step that matters

Cooling the garlic in the brine before transferring. Garlic should be fully cooled and peeled from the brine before going into jars, so the cloves stay firm and do not cook further or soften when the hot vinegar is added.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against garlic, vinegar, pepper, horseradish, mustard. 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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