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French Pickles

A pickled vegetable mixture of tomatoes, onions, and cauliflower in a seasoned vinegar brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

French Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Combine sliced tomatoes, onions, and cauliflower in a large bowl.

  2. Sprinkle with 1 pint of coarse sea salt and let stand overnight.

  3. In the morning, drain off the salt.

  4. Boil the vegetables in 2 quarts of water and 1 quart of vinegar for 15-20 minutes.

  5. Drain well.

Make the pickle

  1. Add 7 pints of vinegar, brown sugar, white mustard seed, ground allspice, cloves, ginger, cinnamon, mustard, and cayenne pepper to a kettle.

  2. Boil the mixture for 15-20 minutes, stirring carefully to avoid burning.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cauliflower + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

  5. Cauliflower + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together105 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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 tender pieces during boiling.
Sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables overnight, firming them and helping them keep their texture.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its tang.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity and gives the pickle a deeper flavor.
White mustard seed
Contributes a sharp, pungent flavor that becomes milder as it cooks.

The step that matters

Stirring the mixture while it boils. The sugar in the thick vinegar mixture can scorch on the bottom of the kettle, so stirring carefully keeps it from burning and tasting bitter.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, cauliflower, vinegar, sugar, mustard, allspice, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, cauliflower, vinegar, sugar, mustard, allspice, 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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