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French Pickle

A pickled green tomato and onion relish seasoned with salt, vinegar, sugar, mustard, spices, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 green tomatoes and onions.

  2. Sprinkle the salt over the vegetables and let them sit overnight.

Cook and pickle

  1. In the morning, drain the vegetables and boil them in a mixture of vinegar and water for 15 minutes.

  2. Drain again and combine with vinegar, brown sugar, mustard, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Boil the mixture for another 15 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. 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. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 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
Form the bulk of the pickle and absorb the vinegar and spices as they cook.
Onions
Add body and a mellow sweetness that softens as the mixture boils.
Sea salt
Draws water out of the sliced vegetables, firming them and reducing moisture before pickling.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its sharp flavor.
Brown sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness and depth.

The step that matters

Salting overnight. Salt draws moisture out of the sliced vegetables through osmosis. Skipping or shortening this rest leaves the vegetables wetter, so the finished pickle is softer and more diluted.

Swap the onion

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

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

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