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Indian Pickle

A fermented vegetable pickle made with vinegar, mustard flour, spices, and assorted vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Indian Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Divide the cauliflowers into pieces and slice the stalks.

  2. Slice the white cabbages and add them to the cauliflowers.

  3. Add the inside slices of carrots, onions, and turnips.

  4. Boil a strong brine and simmer the pickles in it for 2 minutes.

  5. Drain the pickles and let them dry until shriveled.

Make the pickle liquor

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar, mustard flour, long pepper, ginger, black pepper, cloves, horseradish, and shallots, and boil the mixture.

  2. Pour the hot mixture over the pickles in a jar.

Seal and rest

  1. Once cooled, seal the jar and add more vinegar if necessary.

  2. Let it sit for a month before using.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Horseradish + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together139 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Mustard + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its tang.
Mustard flour
Adds pungent heat and body to the liquid, sharpening the flavour of the pickle.
Cauliflowers
Form the main crisp vegetable body of the pickle, holding texture through brining.
White cabbages
Contribute bulk and a firm crunch that absorbs the spiced vinegar.
Black pepper
Supplies sharp aromatic heat that penetrates the vegetables during the long rest.
Ginger
Adds warm aromatic pungency that complements the vinegar and spices.

The step that matters

Drain and dry the pickles until shriveled. Removing surface water before adding the hot vinegar keeps the vegetables crisp and stops the liquid from being diluted, so the pickle stays firm and preserves well.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, mustard, flour, pepper, clove, horseradish, cauliflower):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, mustard, flour, pepper, clove, horseradish, 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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