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French Pickle

A pickled green tomato and onion relish made with vinegar, sugar, mustard, spices, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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. Sprinkle salt over the sliced green tomatoes and onions.

  2. Let the salted vegetables sit overnight.

  3. Drain the vegetables thoroughly.

Cook and combine

  1. Boil the tomatoes and onions in 2 quarts of water and 1 quart of vinegar for 15-20 minutes.

  2. Drain in a colander.

  3. In a pot, combine 4 quarts of vinegar, brown sugar, white mustard seed, cloves, cinnamon, ginger, ground mustard, and cayenne pepper.

  4. Cook the mixture for 15 minutes.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  5. Mustard + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 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

Green tomatoes
Form the bulk of the pickle and absorb the spiced vinegar syrup as they cook.
Onions
Add savory body and soften during boiling, giving the pickle texture.
Salt
Draws water out of the vegetables overnight, firming them before cooking.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its sharp flavour.
Brown sugar
Balances the acidity with sweetness and helps form a thick, rich syrup.
White mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that mellows during cooking.

The step that matters

Draining the salted vegetables thoroughly. Salt draws out moisture overnight; any leftover liquid dilutes the vinegar mixture, weakening its acidity and preservative effect and making the pickle watery.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, vinegar, sugar, mustard, clove, cinnamon, ginger):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, vinegar, sugar, mustard, clove, cinnamon, ginger. 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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