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Indian Pickle

A pickle made from cauliflower, cabbage, carrots, onions, and turnips simmered in a vinegar-based spice mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 286 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Indian Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

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

  2. Drain the pickles and let them dry over a stove or in front of a fire until shriveled.

Make and pour the spiced vinegar

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

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

Seal and rest

  1. Once completely cool, 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. Cauliflower + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together286 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cauliflower + cabbagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Cauliflower + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

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

  5. Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Cauliflower
Forms the bulk of the pickle and absorbs the spiced vinegar as it matures.
White cabbage
Provides crisp texture that holds up through the long pickling time.
Vinegar
Acidity preserves the vegetables and carries the flavor of the spices.
Mustard flour
Adds pungent heat and sharpness to the vinegar.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, warm heat that deepens as the pickle matures.
Ginger
Adds aromatic, warm flavor to the spiced vinegar.

The step that matters

Drying the pickles until shriveled. Vegetables that are still wet dilute the vinegar and can spoil in the jar. Drying removes surface water so the acidic liquid stays strong and the pickle keeps its crunch.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, cabbage, carrot, turnip, vinegar, mustard, flour):

  1. Broccolifits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, cabbage, carrot, turnip, vinegar, mustard, flour. 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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