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Chopped French Pickle

A pickled mixture of cucumbers, onions, cauliflower, and peppers seasoned with mustard, turmeric, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and cauliflower 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 ↓

Chopped French Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Combine the ripe cucumbers, white onions, green cucumbers, cauliflower, red peppers, green peppers, and mustard seed in a large bowl.

  2. Pour boiling salted water over the mixture.

  3. Let the mixture stand overnight.

  4. Strain the mixture.

  5. Scald the strained mixture in 1 part vinegar and 2 parts water.

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, heat the vinegar and sugar together.

  2. Mix the flour, mustard, and turmeric in a bowl.

  3. Moisten the flour mixture with cold water or the vinegar and sugar mixture.

  4. Cook the mixture until it thickens.

  5. Stir in the chopped vegetable mixture.

Store

  1. Store in airtight jars in a cool place.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Flour
Thickens the dressing as it cooks, giving the pickle its body.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its yellow color and a warm, earthy flavor.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and adds sweetness.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and gives the pickle its tang.
Mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that complements the vegetables.
Cauliflower
Forms the crisp, bulky vegetable body of the pickle.

The step that matters

Cook the flour mixture until it thickens. Raw flour tastes pasty and can leave lumps. Moistening it smoothly first and cooking it fully lets the starch swell and thicken the dressing evenly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

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