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French Pickle

A cucumber pickle with onions, vinegar, sugar, spices, mustard, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Turmeric and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 629 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

French Pickle

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Drain the sliced onions overnight.

Make the pickle

  1. Combine cucumbers, onions, vinegar, sugar, turmeric, allspice, celery seed, and black pepper in a pot.

  2. Place the spices in a bag and boil with the mixture, then remove the bag after boiling.

  3. Mix ground mustard with flour and add to the pot.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil and cook for five minutes.

Jar

  1. Pack the pickle into jars and seal.

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. Turmeric + allspicetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Turmeric + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cucumber + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,102 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Turmeric + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Make up the bulk of the pickle and provide its crisp, fresh texture.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its sharp flavor.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Ground mustard
Adds pungent flavor and helps thicken the liquid when combined with flour.
Flour
Thickens the pickling liquid so it clings to the vegetables.
Onions
Add savory bulk and a sharp, aromatic flavor that softens during cooking.

The step that matters

Adding the ground mustard and flour. Mustard and flour mixed into hot liquid can clump if added dry or unmixed. Blending them into a smooth paste first lets them disperse evenly and thicken the pickle without lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, vinegar, sugar, turmeric, allspice, celery, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, sugar, turmeric, allspice, celery, pepper. 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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