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Dessert

French Pickles

Pickled green tomatoes and onions with vinegar, sugar, mustard seed, pepper, cinnamon, cloves, and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Combine chopped tomatoes, onions, and salt in a bowl.

  2. Let stand overnight.

  3. Drain the water off.

Cook and season

  1. Add 2 quarts of water and boil for 20 minutes, then drain again.

  2. Add 2 quarts of vinegar, sugar, mustard seed, pepper, cinnamon, cloves, and ginger.

  3. Boil for another 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 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
Provide the bulk of the pickle and firm pieces that hold their shape during cooking.
Onions
Add savory flavor and body, softening as they cook and blending into the pickle.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that preserves the pickle and balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that offsets the vinegar's sharpness and helps create a thick, syrupy texture.
White mustard seed
Contributes a sharp, pungent bite that deepens as the seeds cook in the liquid.

The step that matters

Draining after the overnight salt rest. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes and onions, so draining off that liquid before the first boil concentrates flavor and keeps the pickle from becoming watery.

Swap the onion

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

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

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