Spices and aromatics: what goes with what

These are the rules of the combiner, "What can I ferment with what I have?", and they work just as well if you mix by hand:

1. One vegetable leads. It's the base, the one the jar is named after: cabbage, carrot, cucumber.
2. Extras weigh at most 30% of the base. Fruit, another vegetable or a fresh aromatic such as ginger. That is a house rule, so that sauerkraut with apple is still sauerkraut. If you pick apple (150 g per kilo of cabbage) and carrot (200 g), they add up to 350 g: the combiner scales both down by the same share, to about 130 and 170 g.
3. Spices go on their own, in grams per kilo. They're so small an amount that they don't count toward that 30%.

The salt is always weighed against everything that goes into the jar, extras and spices included, or against the water if it's a brine. Weigh it all: the ratio of vegetable to everything else changes the flavor and, often, the safety¹.

• Whole. Whole spices change the color of the ferment less², and ground ones darken pickles³. The exception is ground turmeric, which is there precisely to color. The NCHFP's tested dill pickle recipe (the National Center for Home Food Preservation) uses dill seed or dill heads⁴ and, if you like, whole pickling spices⁵.
• Fresh. Moldy garlic or spices soften pickles. Use fresh spices, with no sign of mold or damp⁶.
• Few. Too many spices give a strong, bitter taste⁷. Start with one or two and add more in the next batch.

The amounts are the ones the combiner uses per kilo (2.2 lb) of main vegetable. They aren't safety figures: they're the house's, so the aroma comes through without drowning the vegetable.

Classic pairings exist for a reason. Caraway is the German one, and it makes sauerkraut milder and less sulfurous than plain⁸. Juniper and bay leaf are the Alsatian pair. Oregano and a little chili make Salvadoran curtido.

Garlic is always an extra, never the main vegetable: there are no validated recipes for fermenting it⁹. In the combiner it goes from 12 to 30 g per kilo, depending on the method. Chili is usually an extra too: a few grams in sauerkraut, kimchi or a brine. It's the base in hot sauces and in brined jalapeños.

And nothing goes in oil, whether to flavor the jar or to cover it: oil can create airless pockets where the botulism bacterium grows¹⁰.

Fresh dill and cilantro go from 10 to 15 g per kilo. Grape leaves are a pickle classic: they hold back the enzymes that soften cucumbers, although if you cut off the blossom end, you don't need them¹¹. That's the end opposite the stem, and it's where the enzyme is¹²: slice a thin round off it before the cucumber goes into the jar.

There's one exception to fresh herbs. In preserved lemons, use only dried spices or herbs, because fresh ones can change the pH¹³.

Fruit is an extra like any other: apple or pear in sauerkraut (150 g per kilo), pear in kimchi (50 g), mango in hot sauce (200 g), lemon in nearly everything (30 g). It brings sweetness and aroma, and it counts toward the 30%. It carries sugar, and that changes the ferment: the guide to fruit in a ferment explains how.

In the combiner you pick the main vegetable, the extras and the spices. It gives you the grams for your jar and the salt on the weight of everything. Change one thing at a time, and write it down in the batch's tasting: if you change three, you won't know which one made the difference. The flavor wheel helps you describe what changed.