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French Pickle

A pickled mixture of green tomatoes, sweet peppers, onions, and spices in vinegar and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

French Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice the tomatoes, peppers, and onions very thin.

  2. Sprinkle salt on each and drain in separate cheesecloth bags.

  3. The next day, squeeze the vegetables until very dry.

Make the pickle

  1. In a pot, boil the vinegar and brown sugar.

  2. Tie the cinnamon and cloves in a bag and add to the pot.

  3. Pour the boiling mixture over the vegetables and cook until heated through.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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 soften as they cook in the sweet vinegar.
Sweet peppers
Add body and mild sweetness to the pickle.
Onions
Add savory flavor and bulk to the pickle.
White wine vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
Brown sugar
Balances the vinegar's sharpness with sweetness and a deeper flavor.

The step that matters

Squeezing the salted vegetables until very dry. Salt draws water out of the vegetables, and removing that liquid keeps the pickle from diluting the vinegar syrup and helps the vegetables stay firm rather than watery.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pepper, white wine, vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, clove):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, white wine, vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, clove. 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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