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Indian Pickles

A spicy pickled mixture of ginger, cloves, chillies, pepper, allspice, salt, garlic, onions, mustard, turmeric, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Indian Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spice base

  1. Bruise the ginger root and place it in a bag.

  2. Add cloves, chillies, black pepper, allspice, coarse sea salt, garlic, and bruised onions.

  3. Boil the mixture for 30 minutes.

Add the mustard and turmeric

  1. Mix mustard and turmeric with a little cold vinegar, then add to the boiled mixture.

  2. Boil for another 30 minutes.

Store and fill

  1. Make this early in the summer and store in a deep jar.

  2. Add uncooked and perfectly dry onions, cauliflower, small cucumbers, beans, etc., in their season.

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. Ginger + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Mustard
Adds sharp pungency and flavour that carries through the long boil and storage.
Turmeric
Contributes a warm yellow colour and earthy, bitter flavour to the pickle.
Garlic
Adds pungent, savoury depth that mellows during the long simmer.
Black pepper
Provides sharp heat that builds in the spiced brine as it boils.

The step that matters

Keep the vegetables uncooked and perfectly dry. Any moisture on fresh vegetables dilutes the vinegar and spiced liquid and invites spoilage, so the vegetables must be dry before they go into the jar.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ginger, clove, pepper, allspice, garlic, mustard, turmeric):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, clove, pepper, allspice, garlic, mustard, turmeric. 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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