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Indian Pickle

A pickled mixture of ginger, garlic, long pepper, cabbage, cauliflower, radish, and celery.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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

Prepare the ginger and garlic

  1. Soak the ginger in water overnight.

  2. Scrape and slice the ginger, then place the sliced ginger in a pan with salt until ready to use.

  3. Peel and slice the garlic, then salt the garlic for three days.

  4. Dry the salted garlic in the sun.

Prepare the long pepper and vegetables

  1. Salt the long pepper for three days.

  2. Dry the salted long pepper in the sun.

  3. Quarter the small white cabbages, then salt the quartered cabbages for three days.

  4. Squeeze and dry the salted cabbages in the sun.

  5. Cut the cauliflowers into branches.

  6. Remove the greens from the radishes.

  7. 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.

  1. Cauliflower + radishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together55 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  2. Cabbage + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together305 recipes

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

  3. Cabbage + radishtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together106 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. 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

What each ingredient does

White ginger
Salting and drying concentrates its flavour and firms the pieces for pickling.
Garlic
Salting and sun-drying removes moisture, concentrating its pungent flavour for the pickle.
Long pepper
Salting and sun-drying removes moisture, concentrating its heat and aroma.
Small white cabbages
Salting draws out water so the cabbage becomes pliable and absorbs the pickling flavours.

The step that matters

Salting the garlic, long pepper and cabbages for three days. Salt draws water out of plant tissue by osmosis. Enough salt and a full three days are needed to remove moisture, which keeps the vegetables from spoiling and stops the pickle from becoming soggy.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. 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.

“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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