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French Pickles

A pickled vegetable mixture of cabbage, cucumbers, peppers, onions, and spices, preserved in vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

French Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the cabbage, cucumbers, peppers, and onions into small pieces, but not too fine.

  2. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and let stand overnight.

  3. Drain the vegetables in the morning.

Make the pickles

  1. Mix the vegetables together, pour the vinegar over them, and scald.

  2. Add the brown sugar, mustard seed, celery seed, and turmeric.

  3. Stir well and bring to a boil.

  4. Remove from heat.

  5. Let cool.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Celery + turmerictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Provides the bulk and crunch of the pickle.
Cucumbers
Adds crisp texture that holds up to salting and cooking.
Onions
Adds sharp flavor that mellows during cooking.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that preserves the vegetables and sharpens the flavor.
Brown sugar
Balances the sharp acidity with sweetness.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent, mustardy flavor as it cooks in the liquid.

The step that matters

Drain the salted vegetables. Salt draws water out of the vegetables overnight. Draining them well removes that liquid, so the pickle stays crisp rather than diluted in the vinegar.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, cucumber, pepper, vinegar, mustard, celery, turmeric):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Cauliflowerfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, cucumber, pepper, vinegar, mustard, celery, turmeric. 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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