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Cauliflower Pickle

A pickled cauliflower prepared with vinegar, mustard, cayenne pepper, turmeric, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 514 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cauliflower Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cauliflower

  1. Cut the cauliflower close to the stock and place in an earthen dish.

  2. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and let stand for three days.

  3. Steam the cauliflower until nearly soft.

Make the pickling liquid

  1. Heat the vinegar until scalding hot.

  2. Mix mustard, cayenne pepper, and turmeric with enough cold vinegar to make a smooth paste.

  3. Add the paste to the scalding vinegar and bring to a boil.

Pickle

  1. Pour the hot vinegar mixture over the cauliflower.

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 + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together514 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cauliflower + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Pepper + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Cauliflower
Forms the crisp-tender vegetable body that absorbs the pickling liquid.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the cauliflower during the three-day rest, firming its texture.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the cauliflower and gives the pickle its sharp flavor.
Mustard
Adds pungent, sharp flavor to the pickling liquid.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its yellow color and a mild earthy aroma.

The step that matters

Mix the spice paste smooth before adding it to the hot vinegar. Dry spices clump and sink if added directly to hot liquid. Mixing them into a smooth paste with cold vinegar first lets them disperse evenly, so the brine is uniformly flavored and colored rather than speckled or gritty.

Swap the turmeric

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Turmericthe original
  4. Allspicefits less well

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