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French Pickles

A pickled mix of green tomatoes, cabbage, celery, and peppers in vinegar, sugar, mustard, and horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the green tomatoes and sprinkle with a little coarse sea salt.

  2. Let them stand overnight.

  3. Drain the tomatoes until dry.

  4. Cook until tender.

  5. Strain through a colander.

  6. Chop the cabbage, celery, and green peppers finely.

Make the pickle

  1. In a pot, scald together the vinegar, brown sugar, mustard, and horseradish.

  2. Pour the mixture over the tomatoes and mix well.

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. Celery + mustardtop 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
Form the bulk of the pickle and give it its main body and texture.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps preserve it.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the vinegar.
Mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent flavor to the sweet and sour base.
Horseradish
Adds a hot, pungent bite to the pickle.
Cabbage
Adds crunch and bulk to the finely chopped vegetable mixture.

The step that matters

Drain the tomatoes until dry. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes overnight. If they are not drained well, the extra liquid dilutes the vinegar mixture and leaves the pickle watery and less firm.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Broccolifits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, celery, pepper, vinegar, sugar, mustard, 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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