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Indian Pickle

A fermented vegetable pickle made with cabbage, cauliflower, cucumbers, radish pods, kidney beans, beet root, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and radish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 212 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Indian Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the cabbage, cauliflower, cucumbers, radish pods, kidney beans, and beet root.

  2. Place the chopped vegetables in a sieve and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

  3. Set the sieve in the sun or near a fire for 3 days to dry.

  4. Layer the dried vegetables in a large earthen pot, adding a handful of brown mustard seed between each layer.

Pickle and spice

  1. In a pot, combine enough vinegar to cover the vegetables with 1 ounce of turmeric, boil, and pour it hot over the pickles.

  2. Let the pickles sit for 12 days on the hearth until they turn bright yellow and most of the vinegar is absorbed.

  3. In a separate pot, boil 2 quarts of strong vinegar with 1 ounce of mace, 1 ounce of white pepper, ¼ ounce of cloves, ¼ ounce of long pepper, and ¼ ounce of nutmeg for 10 minutes.

  4. Pour the spiced vinegar over the pickles along with 4 ounces of peeled garlic.

  5. Seal the pot tightly and store for later use.

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. Cucumber + radishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together212 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Cauliflower + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Cauliflower + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together514 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Radish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together297 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Cauliflower + radishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together55 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the pickle and holds its crisp texture through salting and drying.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables so they dry and take up vinegar more readily.
Vinegar
Acidifies the pickle, preserving the vegetables and giving the sharp flavour.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its bright yellow colour and an earthy, warm flavour.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma and flavour that mellows during the long pickling period.
Brown mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent flavour and aroma between the layers of vegetables.

The step that matters

Drying the salted vegetables. Salting and drying must remove enough moisture before the vinegar is added; otherwise the vegetables dilute the vinegar and may spoil or turn soft.

Swap the kidney beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, cauliflower, cucumber, radish, mustard, vinegar, turmeric):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Sesamefits better
  4. Kidney beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, cauliflower, cucumber, radish, mustard, 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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