Skip to main content
Main

Indian Pickle, or Piccalillo

A fermented pickle made with cabbage, cauliflower, cucumbers, onions, beans, radish, beetroot, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Indian Pickle, or Piccalillo

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the white cabbage, cauliflowers, small cucumbers, onions, kidney beans, radish pods, and beetroot.

  2. Place the chopped vegetables in a sieve and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

  3. Let them dry in a warm place for three days.

Pickle

  1. Layer the dried vegetables in a large earthen pan, adding a handful of mustard seed between each layer.

  2. Combine vinegar to cover the vegetables with 1 ounce of turmeric per gallon of vinegar.

  3. Boil and pour the hot mixture over the pickles.

  4. Let the mixture sit in a warm place for two weeks or until the pickles turn bright yellow and most of the vinegar is absorbed.

Add the spiced vinegar

  1. In a separate pot, boil 2 quarts of vinegar with 1 ounce each of mace and white pepper, and ¼ ounce each of cloves and nutmeg for 10 minutes.

  2. Pour the spiced vinegar over the pickles, adding 3 ounces of peeled garlic and a few shallots.

  3. Ensure everything is tightly packed.

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. Radish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together297 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Cucumber + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

White cabbage
Forms the bulk of the pickle and absorbs the vinegar and spices as it sits.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the vegetables so they dry and pickle more firmly.
Vinegar
Acidifies and preserves the vegetables while carrying the turmeric and spices.
Turmeric
Gives the pickles their bright yellow colour.
Mustard seed
Adds a pungent, sharp flavour that builds as the pickle matures.
Cloves
Contributes warm, aromatic spice to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Drying the vegetables with salt. Salting and drying the vegetables for three days removes water, so they take up vinegar and stay crisp rather than becoming diluted and soft. Too little drying leaves excess moisture that weakens the pickle.

Swap the kidney beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, cauliflower, cucumber, onion, radish, beetroot, mustard):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Sesamefits better
  4. Kidney beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, cauliflower, cucumber, onion, radish, beetroot, mustard. 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 indian pickle recipes

East 23West 7 See all 56 →

You might also like

Red CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipesBeef Kidney in GravyBeef Kidney in Gravy53 recipesBaked CabbageBaked Cabbage51 recipes