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Indian Pickle

A mixed vegetable pickle made with ginger, garlic, cabbage, cauliflower, radish, celery, beans, elder shoots, apples, cucumbers, and spices, preserved in vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 vegetables

  1. Soak the ginger in water overnight, then scrape, slice, and salt it in a pan until ready.

  2. Peel, slice, and salt the garlic for three days, then dry it in the sun.

  3. Salt and dry long pepper similarly.

  4. Quarter small white cabbages, salt for three days, squeeze, and dry in the sun.

  5. Prepare cauliflowers, radishes, celery, French beans, and elder shoots by cutting and salting them, then drying in the sun.

  6. Slice or quarter apples and cucumbers, salt, drain, and dry in the sun.

  7. Pour boiling vinegar over the cucumbers and drain after 12 hours without adding salt.

Pickle and pack

  1. In a large stone jar, combine spices, garlic, mustard seed, and enough vinegar for the vegetables.

  2. When the vegetables are dried, place some in a two-quart stone jar and pour over 1 quart of boiling vinegar.

  3. The next day, remove the vegetables, drain them, and repeat the process with more boiling vinegar.

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. Cauliflower + beanstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  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

Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that mellows and sweetens during salting and pickling.
Mustard seed
Contributes sharp, pungent flavour that holds up through the vinegar pickling.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its characteristic yellow colour and earthy flavour.
Boiling vinegar
Acidity preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its sharp, tangy taste.
Cabbages
Salting and drying firms the leaves and concentrates their texture for pickling.

The step that matters

Drying the vegetables in the sun. Salting and sun-drying remove surface moisture before the vinegar is added. If vegetables stay wet, they dilute the vinegar and can spoil, so they should be fully dried first.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, garlic, cabbage, cauliflower, radish, celery, beans. 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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