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French Pickles

A pickled mixture of green tomatoes and onions with spices and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove 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 ↓

French Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the green tomatoes.

  2. Lay the sliced tomatoes in coarse sea salt for 12 hours.

  3. Pour off the brine.

  4. Slice the onions.

Pack and cover

  1. In a large pot, layer the onions, tomatoes, spices, and brown sugar until all ingredients are used.

  2. Pour in vinegar until the ingredients are well covered.

Cook

  1. Boil the mixture for 1 hour.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Form the bulk of the pickle and give it its firm, tangy body.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and aroma that mellow during the long boil.
White mustard seed
Provides sharp, pungent flavour that carries through the cooked pickle.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Supplies acidity that sharpens the flavour and keeps the pickle tangy.

The step that matters

Salting the sliced tomatoes. Salt draws water out of the tomato slices through osmosis, firming their texture and reducing excess liquid. Pouring off the brine removes that water and much of the salt, so the tomatoes stay firm and the pickle does not turn watery or overly salty.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, mustard, allspice, clove, pepper, celery, sugar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, mustard, allspice, clove, pepper, celery, sugar. 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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