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French Pickle

A pickle made from cauliflower and cucumbers, seasoned with salt, vinegar, sugar, turmeric, celery seed, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 584 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

French Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Combine cauliflower and cucumbers in a large bowl.

  2. Add salt and let it stand overnight.

  3. Rinse the vegetables well.

  4. Cover with vinegar.

Make the sauce and bottle

  1. In a pot, add sugar, turmeric powder, celery seed, and mustard. Boil for 20 minutes.

  2. Bottle the mixture.

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. Cauliflower + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

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

  2. Cauliflower + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together514 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Turmeric + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 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

Cauliflower
Forms the crisp, bulky body of the pickle.
Small cucumbers
Provide crunch and fresh flavor that holds up in brine.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables, firming them and seasoning the pickle.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its sharp taste.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Turmeric powder
Gives the pickle its yellow color and earthy flavor.

The step that matters

Rinse the vegetables well. Salt left on the vegetables makes the pickle overly salty, so thorough rinsing after the overnight salting is needed to control the final seasoning.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, cucumber, vinegar, sugar, turmeric, mustard):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, cucumber, vinegar, sugar, turmeric, mustard. 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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