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French Pickle

A pickle of green tomatoes, onions, and green peppers in a vinegar and spice brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

Salt and rest

  1. Combine green tomatoes, onions, green peppers, and coarse sea salt in a bowl.

  2. Let stand overnight.

  3. Drain off the brine.

Simmer the vegetables

  1. Add water and vinegar, then boil for 20 minutes.

  2. Drain well through a colander.

Spice and cook

  1. In a pot, combine more than 2 quarts of vinegar, sugar, white mustard seed, ground cloves, and cinnamon.

  2. Boil for 20 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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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 into a tender, chewy texture during cooking.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables, firming them and concentrating their flavor.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps preserve it.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
White mustard seed
Contributes a pungent, earthy flavor and aroma to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Drain off the brine and drain well. Salt draws water out of the vegetables and firms them. Brine left in the mixture would make the pickle overly salty and would dilute the vinegar liquid added later.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

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