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Cauliflowers or Broccoli

A pickled cauliflower or broccoli flavored with curry powder and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and vinegar work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 888 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cauliflowers or Broccoli

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetable

  1. Choose a hard, ripe cauliflower or broccoli.

  2. Cut away the leaves and stalks.

Blanch and dry

  1. In a stew-pan, combine 1 quart of water with ¼ pound of coarse sea salt.

  2. Bring to a boil.

  3. Add the cauliflower or broccoli and heat gradually.

  4. Once boiling, remove with a slotted spoon.

  5. Spread the vegetables on a cloth to dry for at least 24 hours by the fire.

Pickle

  1. Once dry, place them in jars and cover with a pickle made by infusing 3 ounces of curry powder in 1 quart of vinegar for three days.

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 + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together888 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cauliflower or broccoli
Forms the crisp, firm body of the pickle that holds its texture in the brine.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the brine and draws out some moisture from the vegetables.
Curry powder
Infuses the vinegar with its spice, colour and aroma.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the vegetables and sharpens the flavour.

The step that matters

Drying the vegetables thoroughly. Any surface water left on the cauliflower or broccoli dilutes the vinegar pickle and can encourage spoilage, so the pieces should be fully dry before they go into the jars.

“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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