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French Pickle

A pickled mixture of cabbage, onions, green tomatoes, and peppers seasoned with mustard, ginger, cloves, cinnamon, celery seed, horseradish, and sugar.

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

  1. Cover the chopped cabbage, onions, green tomatoes, and peppers with coarse sea salt and let sit for 1 hour.

Cook

  1. Add vinegar, mustard, ginger, cloves, cinnamon, celery seed, horseradish, and sugar to the mixture.

  2. Boil until the vegetables are tender.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the pickle and gives it a crisp, firm body once cooked.
Green tomatoes
Adds tartness and body, and their pectin helps the mixture thicken as it cooks.
Onions
Contribute savory depth and aroma that builds as they soften in the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that preserves the vegetables and defines the pickle's tang.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the vinegar and tomatoes with sweetness.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables so they lose moisture before cooking.

The step that matters

Salting the vegetables for 1 hour. Salt draws water out of the cabbage, onions, tomatoes, and peppers through osmosis. Drained vegetables stay firmer and absorb the vinegar better, so the pickle does not turn watery or soft when boiled.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, onion, pepper, mustard, ginger, 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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