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To Make Piccalilly

Piccalilli is a pickled relish of assorted vegetables seasoned with mustard, turmeric, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and radish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 212 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

To Make Piccalilly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Salt the vegetables for 2-3 days.

  2. Dry them in the sun or before the fire.

Make the pickling liquor

  1. Mix the ground mustard and turmeric with a little vinegar.

  2. Boil the garlic, horseradish, mustard seed, black pepper, cloves, and mace in a pot for 5 minutes.

  3. Pour the boiling hot vinegar and spice mixture over the vegetables.

Pack and store

  1. Place the salted vegetables into jars.

  2. Let the jars stand in a warm place for a week, covered.

  3. If the vinegar shrinks, boil more and pour it over the vegetables.

  4. Stir with a wooden spoon and, when cool, seal with a bladder.

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. Cucumber + radishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together212 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Cauliflower + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

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

  3. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Radish + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together38 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that carries through the pickling vinegar.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its characteristic yellow colour and earthy flavour.
Ground mustard
Adds heat and pungency and thickens the spiced vinegar mixture.
Vinegar
Acts as the pickling liquid that preserves the vegetables and gives them acidity.
Garlic
Contributes pungent aroma and flavour to the pickling liquor.
Cauliflower
Forms the firm, crisp vegetable base that absorbs the spiced vinegar.

The step that matters

Salting the vegetables for 2-3 days. Salt draws water out of the vegetables through osmosis, leaving them crisper and less diluting the vinegar. Under-salting leaves excess moisture that can soften the pickle and weaken its keeping quality.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Broccolifits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, cauliflower, cucumber, beans, radish, garlic, horseradish. 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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