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Cauliflowers

A pickled cauliflower dish preserved in vinegar and spices.

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

Prepare the cauliflower

  1. Cut the cauliflower into small sprigs.

  2. Sprinkle the sprigs well with coarse sea salt.

  3. Pour enough boiling water over the cauliflower to cover it.

  4. Tie paper over the jar and let it sit until the next day.

  5. Drain the cauliflower and spread it on a clean cloth.

  6. Cover with another cloth and let it dry until the following day.

Pickle and pack

  1. Boil white vinegar with white peppercorns, bruised ginger, scraped horseradish, and a little mace.

  2. Put the cauliflower into a stone jar and pour the boiling vinegar 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 that holds up in brine.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the cauliflower, leaving it drier and crisper for pickling.
White vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.

The step that matters

Drying the salted cauliflower. Salting and then drying the sprigs removes surface water so the vinegar brine is not diluted and the cauliflower stays crisp rather than soggy. Letting it dry fully until the following day matters for a firm texture.

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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