Name: Indian Pickle
Ingredients: 1 pound white ginger; 1 pound garlic; long pepper; small white cabbages; cauliflowers; radishes; celery; coarse sea salt

Why it works: Cauliflower and radish share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 55 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Indian Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the ginger in water overnight.
Scrape and slice the ginger, then layer it in a pan with coarse sea salt until ready to use.
Peel, slice, and salt the garlic for three days, then dry it in the sun.
Salt and dry the long pepper in the same manner.
Quarter the small white cabbages, salt for three days, then squeeze and dry them in the sun.
Cut the cauliflowers into branches, remove the greens from the radishes, and cut the celery into three-inch lengths.

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.

Cauliflower + radishtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together55 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).
Cabbage + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together305 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Cabbage + radishtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together106 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Garlic + radishtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together199 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (garlic, pepper, cabbage, cauliflower, radish, celery):

Turmericfits better
Parsleyfits better
Tarragonfits better
Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against garlic, pepper, cabbage, cauliflower, radish, celery. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.