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Preserve

Indian Pickle

A preserved mixed vegetable pickle made with ginger, garlic, long pepper, cabbage, cauliflower, radish, celery, beans, apples, cucumbers, vinegar, mustard seed, turmeric, and mustard flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and radish share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 55 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Indian Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Soak the ginger in water overnight, then scrape, slice, and salt it in a pan until ready.

  2. Peel, slice, and salt the garlic for three days, then dry it in the sun.

  3. Salt and dry long pepper similarly.

  4. Quarter small white cabbages, salt for three days, squeeze, and dry in the sun.

  5. Prepare cauliflowers, radishes, celery, French beans, apples, and cucumbers by salting, draining, and drying in the sun.

  6. Pour boiling vinegar over the cucumbers, drain after 12 hours without using salt.

Pack and pickle

  1. In a large stone jar, combine the spices, garlic, mustard seed, and enough vinegar for the vegetables.

  2. When the vegetables are dried, place some in a 2-quart stone jar and pour 1 quart of boiling vinegar over them.

  3. The next day, remove the vegetables, drain them, and place them in a large stock jar.

  4. Boil the vinegar and pour it over more vegetables, letting them sit overnight.

  5. Repeat until all vegetables are cleaned.

Add the mustard

  1. For every gallon of vinegar, mix in 2 ounces of flour of mustard gradually with a little boiling hot vinegar.

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

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

  2. Cabbage + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Cauliflower + beanstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Cabbage + radishtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together106 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Garlic
Adds pungent aroma and flavour that mellows during the long pickling.
Mustard seed
Provides sharp, pungent flavour that carries through the vinegar.
Vinegar
Acidity preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its sour bite.
Flour of mustard
Thickens the pickling liquid and adds mustard pungency.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its yellow colour and a warm, earthy flavour.
Cabbages
Firm vegetable that holds its crunch and absorbs the pickling flavours.

The step that matters

Adding the flour of mustard. Mustard flour added to very hot vinegar can clump if poured in at once. Mixing it gradually with a little boiling vinegar first makes a smooth paste that blends evenly without lumps.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (garlic, pepper, cabbage, cauliflower, radish, celery, beans):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Corianderfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against garlic, pepper, cabbage, cauliflower, radish, celery, beans. 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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