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French Pickles

A pickled vegetable mixture of cabbage, peppers, onions, tomatoes, spices, and vinegar boiled for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

French Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the cabbage, green peppers, onions, and green tomatoes very fine.

Cook

  1. In a large pot, combine the chopped vegetables with black pepper, cloves, allspice, salt, and white mustard seed.

  2. Cover the mixture with vinegar and boil for 2 hours.

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. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 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

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the pickle and gives it a crisp, sturdy texture.
Green tomatoes
Add tartness and body to the chopped vegetable mass.
White mustard seed
Contributes a sharp, pungent flavor that mellows during long cooking.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its tang.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture with vinegar for 2 hours. The vegetables must be fully covered and simmered long enough to soften and absorb the vinegar and spices. Too short a boil leaves them raw and sharp, and the mixture may not keep well.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, pepper, onion, clove, allspice, mustard, vinegar):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, pepper, onion, clove, allspice, mustard, vinegar. 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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