Name: Cornichons, or French Cucumber Pickles
Ingredients: 10 pounds very small cucumbers; 2 handfuls coarse sea salt; white wine vinegar (enough to cover cucumbers); ½ ounce mace per quart of vinegar; ½ ounce sliced ginger per quart of vinegar; ½ ounce whole black pepper per quart of vinegar; 6 cloves per quart of vinegar; a few sprigs of tarragon per quart of vinegar; ½ clove of garlic per quart of vinegar

Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cornichons, or French Cucumber Pickles

Ingredients

10 pounds very small cucumbers
2 handfuls coarse sea salt
white wine vinegar (enough to cover cucumbers)
½ ounce mace per quart of vinegar
½ ounce sliced ginger per quart of vinegar
½ ounce whole black pepper per quart of vinegar
6 cloves per quart of vinegar
a few sprigs of tarragon per quart of vinegar
½ clove of garlic per quart of vinegar

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

Brush cucumbers to clean them and cut off the stems.
Place cucumbers in an earthen pan with salt and let them rest for 24 hours.
Drain the cucumbers and return them to the pan.

Brine and green

Pour boiling white wine vinegar over the cucumbers to cover them.
Cover the pan and let the cucumbers sit in the vinegar for 24 hours.
Remove the vinegar and cover cucumbers with vine leaves.
Boil the vinegar again and pour it over the cucumbers, stirring well. When the vinegar cools, pour it off and boil it again.
Repeat pouring the boiled vinegar over the cucumbers 4 or 5 times until they turn a fine green.
Keep cucumbers covered with fresh vine leaves and a cloth weighted down with a dish.

Jar and pickle

Drain cucumbers on a sieve and place them in glass jars.
Boil fresh white wine vinegar with mace, ginger, black pepper, cloves, tarragon, and garlic for 5 minutes.
Pour the hot vinegar mixture over the pickles and seal the jars. They can be used in a week.

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.

Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,038 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cucumber + tarragontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together274 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,399 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Clove + tarragontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together548 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers: Provide the crisp body of the pickle, which softens and takes on flavor during the salting and vinegar steps.
Coarse sea salt: Draws water out of the cucumbers, firming them and helping them stay crisp.
White wine vinegar: Provides the sour acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickle its tang.
Mace: Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the vinegar.
Black pepper: Adds sharp, pungent aroma to the infused vinegar.
Tarragon: Adds a distinctive herbal, anise-like aroma to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Repeated pouring of boiled vinegar until the cucumbers turn green. Cucumbers turn olive-brown when heated or acidified for long periods, so the vinegar must be re-boiled and poured over them repeatedly and the cucumbers watched closely. Pouring boiling vinegar over them does not by itself keep them green, so checking color at each pour matters, and the cucumbers should not be overcooked.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, white wine, vinegar, ginger, pepper, clove, tarragon):

Allspicefits better
Thymefits better
Marjoramfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, white wine, vinegar, ginger, pepper, clove, tarragon. 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.

Tomato Soup526 recipes

Brown Bread461 recipes

Mutton Broth292 recipes

Yorkshire Pudding264 recipes

Like knowing why a recipe works?

The free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.

Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.

Cornichons, or French Cucumber Pickles