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Indian Pickle

A pickle made with cabbage, cauliflower, celery, beans, gherkins, carrots, onions, eschalots, radish pods, asparagus, nasturtium buds, apples, cucumber, and spices, preserved in vinegar brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 24 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

Brine the vegetables

  1. Prepare a brine with boiling water and salt.

  2. Soak the cabbage, cauliflower, celery, beans, gherkins, carrots, onions, eschalots, radish pods, asparagus, and nasturtium buds in the brine for 3 days.

  3. Drain the brine.

  4. Add the unripe apples and cucumber.

Spice the vinegar

  1. Boil the vinegar with ginger, peppercorns, garlic, coriander, turmeric, chilies, mustard seed, mace, and horseradish.

  2. Pour the boiling vinegar over the vegetables and cover the jar.

  3. Set the jar on a hot hearth for 3 days.

  4. Drain the vinegar.

  5. Re-boil the vinegar, repeating the process the next day.

Finish and jar

  1. Let the pickle stand for 1 day before transferring to jars and sealing.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

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

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the pickle and holds its crisp texture through the long brining.
Cauliflower
Adds firm, crisp pieces that absorb the vinegar and spice flavour.
Mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that develops as the seeds soak in hot vinegar.
Unripe apples
Add tartness and body, and firm pieces that hold up in the vinegar.
White peppercorns
Provide lingering heat and aroma that infuse into the hot vinegar.
Vinegar
Acts as the preserving liquid, adding sharpness and inhibiting spoilage.

The step that matters

Draining and re-boiling the vinegar. Vinegar must be fully drained and brought back to a boil each day so the spices and vegetables are repeatedly exposed to hot, acidic liquid. Skipping or under-heating the vinegar weakens preservation and flavour infusion.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, cauliflower, celery, beans, cucumber, carrot, radish. 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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