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Indian Pickle

A fermented pickle made with ginger, garlic, shallots, horse-radish, cucumbers, beans, gherkins, cauliflower, cabbage, onions, mustard seed, turmeric, cayenne, pepper, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Radish and cucumber 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. Soak the ginger overnight in water.

  2. Scrape and slice the ginger.

  3. Mix the ginger with salt in a pan.

  4. Keep it near the fire.

  5. Slice the garlic, shallots, and horse-radish.

  6. Salt them for three days in a warm place.

  7. Wash and salt the garlic, shallots, and horse-radish again for three more days.

  8. Wash and dry them in the sun.

  9. Salt the cucumbers, French beans, gherkins, cauliflower, cabbage, and small onions in slices for three days.

  10. Squeeze and dry them.

Pack and pickle

  1. Combine all ingredients in a stone jar with mustard seed, turmeric, cayenne, and whole pepper.

  2. Boil enough vinegar to cover the mixture.

  3. Pour it hot over the jar.

  4. Cover the jar until the next day.

  5. Pour off the vinegar.

  6. Boil it.

  7. Add a little for waste.

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. Radish + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together212 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Cucumber + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

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

  3. Radish + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together55 recipes

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

  4. Beans + cauliflowertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

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

  5. Shallot + radishtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Ginger
Adds a sharp, aromatic heat that flavours the pickle.
Garlic
Contributes pungent aroma and flavour that mellows during salting.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent bite and warm flavour to the pickle.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the vegetables and sharpens the flavour.
Cauliflower
Forms the firm vegetable body of the pickle, keeping its crunch through salting.
Cucumbers
Provides crisp texture and moisture that the salt draws out and firms.

The step that matters

Salting the vegetables. Salt draws water out of the vegetables through osmosis, firming them and reducing moisture that would dilute the vinegar. Drying them well afterward keeps the pickle crisp and helps it keep.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (garlic, shallot, horse, radish, cucumber, beans, cauliflower):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against garlic, shallot, horse, radish, cucumber, beans, cauliflower. 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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