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Cauliflowers

Pickled cauliflower prepared by brining, drying, and then marinating in a vinegar-based pickle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 139 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cauliflowers

Ingredients

Directions

Salt and dry

  1. Cut the cauliflower into small pieces.

  2. Place the cauliflower pieces in a jar.

  3. Sprinkle them with coarse sea salt.

  4. Pour boiling water over to cover.

  5. Tie the jar closed.

  6. Let stand overnight.

  7. Drain the cauliflower.

  8. Spread them on a clean cloth.

  9. Cover with another cloth.

  10. Let them dry until the next day.

Pickle and jar

  1. Make a pickle with good white vinegar, white peppercorns, bruised ginger, mace, and scraped horseradish.

  2. Place the dried cauliflower in a stone jar.

  3. Pour the hot pickle over it.

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 + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together139 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Ginger + macetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,152 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Cauliflower + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together170 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Ginger + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together676 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Vinegar + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 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

Cauliflower
Forms the crisp, firm body of the pickle.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture from the cauliflower, firming its texture for pickling.
Good white vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that preserves and flavours the pickle.

The step that matters

Drying the cauliflower before pickling. Leftover surface moisture dilutes the hot vinegar and weakens the pickle, while thorough drying lets the brine and vinegar penetrate and keeps the florets crisp.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, vinegar, ginger, horseradish):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, vinegar, ginger, horseradish. 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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