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French Pickle

A pickled green tomato dish flavored with cinnamon, cloves, allspice, ginger, cayenne, mustard seed, and brown sugar.

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 Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the tomatoes and onions, and layer them in a jar, sprinkling with salt. Let stand for 24 hours.

  2. Drain the vegetables and boil them for 20 minutes in 2 quarts of water and 1 quart of vinegar, then drain again.

Make the pickle

  1. Place the mustard seed, sugar, and spices tied in a bag into the vinegar. When hot, add the pickles and boil for 15 minutes, or until clear and 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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 to a tender texture during boiling.
Onions
Add bulk and sweetness while softening into the pickle.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
Brown sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness and depth.
White mustard seed
Adds a pungent, slightly bitter flavor that deepens during cooking.

The step that matters

Drain the salted vegetables before boiling. Salting draws out water, and draining removes excess salt and moisture. Skipping this leaves the pickle overly salty and diluted, and prevents the vinegar mixture from being absorbed properly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, cinnamon, clove, vinegar, allspice, sugar, ginger. 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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