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Cauliflower Pickle

A pickled cauliflower dish made with vinegar, mustard, spices, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 514 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cauliflower Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cauliflower

  1. Cut the cauliflower close to the stalk into small pieces.

  2. Place the cauliflower in a dish and sprinkle with salt.

  3. Let stand for 3 days, then pour off the liquid.

  4. Steam the cauliflower until nearly soft.

Make the pickling liquid

  1. Heat the vinegar until scalding hot.

  2. Add mustard, cayenne pepper, and turmeric mixed with cold vinegar.

  3. Boil the mixture.

  4. Thicken the mixture with flour.

Pickle and bottle

  1. Pour the mixture over the cauliflower.

  2. Bottle 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. Cauliflower + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together514 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Turmeric + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Pepper + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Turmeric + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,637 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
Forms the crisp-textured bulk of the pickle that the brine is poured over.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
Mustard
Adds pungent flavor and body to the pickling liquid.
Flour
Thickens the pickling liquid so it coats the cauliflower.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its yellow color and earthy aroma.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with flour. Flour must be mixed smoothly with cold vinegar before it goes into the hot liquid, because dry flour added directly forms lumps and the sauce will not thicken evenly.

Swap the cauliflower

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, vinegar, turmeric, mustard, flour):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Cauliflowerthe original
  4. Lettucefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, vinegar, turmeric, mustard, flour. 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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