Skip to main content
Main

French Pickles

A pickled vegetable mixture of tomatoes, onions, cabbage, cauliflower, and green peppers in a mustard-sugar paste and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cabbage and cauliflower match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 305 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

French Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Combine the chopped tomatoes, onions, cabbage, cauliflower, and green peppers in a bowl.

  2. Let the mixture stand in light brine for 24 hours.

  3. Drain the vegetables in a colander until very dry.

Make the custard

  1. In a separate bowl, mix the ground mustard, turmeric powder, sugar, flour, and enough water to form a paste.

  2. In a pot, bring the vinegar and water to a boil.

  3. Cook the paste until it thickens to a custard-like consistency, then add it to the pickled vegetables.

Seal

  1. Seal the mixture in fruit jars.

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. Cabbage + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together305 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  5. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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 provide its main texture.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the pickle its sharp flavor and helps preserve it.
Flour
Thickens the mustard paste into a custard-like sauce as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard.
Ground mustard
Adds pungent, sharp flavor to the sauce.
Turmeric powder
Gives the pickle its yellow color.

The step that matters

Cooking the paste to a custard-like thickness. Flour thickens only when heated enough for its starch to swell. Undercooked paste stays thin and tastes raw, while overcooking can scorch it on the bottom of the pot, so stir steadily until it thickens.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, cabbage, cauliflower, pepper, mustard, sugar, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, cabbage, cauliflower, pepper, mustard, sugar, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesRed CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipes