Skip to main content
Main

Cauliflower Pickle

A pickled cauliflower dish preserved in vinegar with peppercorns, ginger, mace, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Ginger and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,152 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Cauliflower Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cauliflower

  1. Cut off the leaves from the cauliflower and cut the flower into neat pieces.

  2. Pour boiling water over the cauliflower pieces and let them stand for five minutes.

  3. Drain the cauliflower and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

  4. Let it stand for twelve hours, then spread out on a sieve to dry.

  5. Once well dried, fill the pickle jars.

Pickle and store

  1. Boil vinegar with peppercorns, ginger, mace, and cayenne, then allow it to cool.

  2. Pour the cooled vinegar over the cauliflower in the jars.

  3. Cover the jars closely and store for use.

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 + macetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,152 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Ginger + vinegartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,126 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Mace + vinegartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,415 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Cauliflower
Forms the crisp, firm pickled pieces that absorb the spiced vinegar.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the cauliflower, firming it and helping it stay crisp in the brine.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the cauliflower and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Peppercorns
Adds sharp, pungent aroma to the spiced vinegar.
Ginger
Contributes warm, aromatic flavour to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Drying the cauliflower before filling the jars. Salting draws out water, but any moisture left on the pieces dilutes the vinegar and can soften the cauliflower or encourage spoilage. Drying well before adding the cooled vinegar keeps the pickle crisp and stable.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

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

More pickled cauliflower recipes

Spiced 3 See all 97 →

You might also like

Cauliflower SoupCauliflower Soup28 recipesCream of Cauliflower SoupCream of Cauliflower Soup22 recipesCreamed CauliflowerCreamed Cauliflower17 recipesEscalloped CauliflowerEscalloped Cauliflower9 recipes