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Indian Pickle

A preserved vegetable pickle made with vinegar, mustard flour, ginger, peppercorns, cloves, horseradish, eschalots, and cayenne pepper pods.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Indian Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Divide cauliflowers into pieces and slice the stalks, carrots, onions, turnips, cucumbers, and cabbages.

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

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

Pickle and store

  1. In a pot, heat 4 quarts of vinegar and add mustard flour, ginger, black peppercorns, cloves, horseradish, eschalots, and Cayenne pepper pods.

  2. Boil the mixture and pour it immediately over the dried vegetables in a jar.

  3. Once cool, cover the jar tightly and add more vinegar if necessary.

  4. Let it sit for about 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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Horseradish + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together139 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Mustard + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

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

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Provides the acidic liquid that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Mustard flour
Adds pungent heat and sharpness that flavours the vinegar.
Cauliflowers
Form the main crisp vegetable body of the pickle.
Cucumbers
Add crunch and fresh bulk to the pickled mixture.

The step that matters

Drying the vegetables until shriveled. Vegetables that still hold surface water dilute the hot vinegar and soften the pickle. Drying them well helps the vinegar penetrate evenly and keeps the pieces firmer during the month of standing.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, mustard, flour, clove, horseradish, pepper, cauliflower. 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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