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French Pickle

A pickled mixture of green tomatoes, cabbage, peppers, onions, mustard seed, celery seed, ginger, red pepper, cayenne, horseradish, salt, vinegar, and olive oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

French Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop all ingredients very finely.

  2. Combine chopped ingredients in a large pot.

Cook

  1. Cover with cider vinegar and boil for 4 hours, adding more vinegar as it evaporates.

  2. When cool, stir in the olive oil.

Jar

  1. Transfer to jars and seal tightly until ready to use.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cabbage + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the chopped vegetable base that softens during long boiling.
White mustard seed
Supplies sharp pungency that mellows as the pickle cooks and sits.
Cider vinegar
Acidity that preserves the chopped vegetables and carries the flavour through the boil.
Olive oil
Adds fat and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the finished pickle.
Horseradish
Contributes sharp, volatile heat that fades somewhat with long cooking.

The step that matters

Boiling for 4 hours with added vinegar. Long boiling softens the finely chopped vegetables and concentrates flavour, but the liquid must stay above the solids. Adding vinegar as it evaporates prevents scorching and keeps the mixture covered and acidic enough to preserve.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, cabbage, pepper, onion, mustard, celery, horseradish):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, cabbage, pepper, onion, mustard, celery, horseradish. 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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