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To Pickle Cauliflowers

A method for pickling cauliflower using salt, alum, vinegar, peppercorns, mace, and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,776 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

To Pickle Cauliflowers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cauliflower

  1. Separate the cauliflowers into bunches and place them in a sieve.

  2. Sprinkle coarse sea salt over the cauliflowers and let them stand for 2-3 days to draw out moisture.

  3. Transfer the cauliflowers to a jar.

  4. Boil 2 quarts of water with a piece of alum until dissolved.

  5. Pour the hot alum water over the cauliflowers and let them cool.

  6. Remove the cauliflowers and place them on a clean cloth to dry.

  7. Pack the cauliflowers into jars.

Pickle and pour

  1. Boil white wine vinegar with white peppercorns, mace, and sliced ginger.

  2. Pour the boiling vinegar mixture over the cauliflowers in the jars.

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. White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Mace + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,152 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Cauliflower + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together170 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

  5. White wine + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,329 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Whitest cauliflowers
Form the crisp, pale body of the pickle that absorbs the brine.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the cauliflower, firming its texture before pickling.
Alum
Helps the cauliflower stay firm and crisp during pickling.
White wine vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.

The step that matters

Drying the cauliflower before packing. Any remaining surface water dilutes the vinegar mixture when poured in and weakens the acidity that preserves the pickle, so the cauliflower should be fully dry before it goes into the jars.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, white wine, vinegar, ginger):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, white wine, vinegar, ginger. 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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