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Celeriac Pickled

A pickled celeriac dish preserved in vinegar, mustard, pepper, and fennel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Fennel and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 292 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Celeriac Pickled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celeriac

  1. Peel and cut the celeriac roots into even-sized pieces, not too thin.

  2. Parboil the celeriac in lightly salted water until three-quarters cooked.

  3. Drain the celeriac and arrange it in an earthen jar.

Pickle

  1. Boil the wine vinegar and pour the hot vinegar over the celeriac.

  2. Add a few grains of pepper and fennel leaves.

  3. Cover the jar and let it stand overnight.

  4. Drain the vinegar from the jar and transfer the celeriac to glass jars.

Add the mustard gravy

  1. In a bowl, mix the mustard flour with vinegar and red pepper to create a light gravy.

  2. Pour the gravy over the celeriac.

  3. Cover the jar and store it away.

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. Fennel + mustardtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together292 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Pepper + fenneltop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,216 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Fennel + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together455 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

Celeriac roots
Forms the firm, crisp body of the pickle that holds up to the vinegar.
Wine vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the celeriac.
English mustard flour
Thickens the gravy and adds a pungent, sharp flavour.

The step that matters

Parboiling the celeriac. Cooking the celeriac only until three-quarters done leaves it firm enough to stay crisp in the acidic vinegar. Cooking it fully would make it soft and mushy after pickling.

Swap the fennel

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wine, vinegar, pepper, mustard, flour):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Fennelthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, vinegar, pepper, 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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