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Pickled Cauliflower

A preserved cauliflower dish made by boiling, cooling, and packing in a vinegar and spice brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pickled Cauliflower

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cauliflower

  1. Break the cauliflower into small pieces.

  2. Boil in salted water for 10-15 minutes.

  3. Drain and let cool.

  4. Place in a jar.

Make the pickling liquid

  1. In hot vinegar, scald whole cloves, peppercorns, allspice, and white mustard seeds in a spice bag.

  2. Remove vinegar from heat and stir in French mustard and sugar.

  3. Pour the vinegar over the cauliflower, ensuring it is fully covered.

  4. Seal the jar tightly.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 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. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Cauliflower + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together105 recipes

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

  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
Is the vegetable being pickled; boiling softens it so it takes up the vinegar.
Hot vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle while carrying the spice flavours.
White sugar
Balances the sharp acidity of the vinegar with sweetness.
French mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour and helps the pickling liquid taste rounded.
White mustard seeds
Release their pungent flavour into the hot vinegar as they are scalded.

The step that matters

Fully covering the cauliflower with vinegar. Vinegar must cover all the cauliflower so no pieces are exposed to air, which lets spoilage microbes grow. Acidity above the surface is what keeps the pickle safe and stable.

Swap the cauliflower

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Cauliflowerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, clove, allspice, mustard, sugar. 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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