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Cauliflower Pickles

A pickled cauliflower dish made with vinegar, sugar, eggs, mustard, ginger, garlic, peppers, and turmeric.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cauliflower Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pickling liquid

  1. Beat together the eggs, brown sugar, French mustard, ginger, and turmeric until well combined.

  2. Boil the mixture in vinegar with garlic and green peppers for 10 minutes.

Prepare and pack

  1. Boil the cauliflower in salted water until tender.

  2. Carefully place the cauliflower in a jar and pour the boiling hot mixture over it.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Mustard + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Cauliflower + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together124 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Ginger + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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 of the pickle.
Vinegar
Provides the acid that preserves and gives the pickle its sharp flavor.
Brown sugar
Balances the vinegar's sharpness with sweetness and adds depth.
Eggs
Thicken the mixture and add richness and body to the liquid.
French mustard
Adds pungent flavor and helps emulsify the sauce.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its yellow color and earthy aroma.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling hot mixture over the cauliflower. Eggs in the mixture can curdle or scramble if overheated, so the liquid should be kept just at a boil and poured carefully. The hot liquid also needs to be fully hot to help the pickle preserve properly.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, vinegar, sugar, egg, mustard, ginger, clove):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, vinegar, sugar, egg, mustard, ginger, clove. 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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