Readers of Brian biographies will doubtless recall that he was a noted maker of pickles (the culinary kind) - to his own recipe. Whether this was actually a ‘secret’ or not isn’t clear, but his daughter Mrs Jean Furnivall has very kindly passed it on for publication at our request.

2 cauliflowers cut into sprigs
3 gherkins or slices of cucumber
1 lb small onions
3 pints vinegar
1½ oz curry powder
1 oz turmeric (HB’s annotation that ‘You get this at Boots’ is a reminder of the days when intimate knowledge of individual curry spices was not part of most cooks’ armouries, and evidence that Brian was in the vanguard of comestible as well as musical enterprise.)
3 oz mustard
1 tablespoon of flour (no more)
3 tablespoons demarara sugar
1 large dessertspoonful salt

Put cauliflower, cucumber, onions in dish — sprinkle them with salt and leave them overnight.

Mix mustard, curry, turmeric, flour, sugar and the salt dissolved in the vinegar (characteristic Brianic thematic ambiguity here — does he mean the salt gets dissolved in the vinegar first?) and put in saucepan and boil for 3 minutes.

Bottle when cool.

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