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French Sauce

A pickled cabbage mixture with onions, tomatoes, peppers, sugar, mustard seed, allspice, cloves, salt, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

French Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the cabbage, onions, green tomatoes, and red peppers.

  2. Combine all chopped ingredients in a large pot.

Cook

  1. Add sugar, mustard seed, allspice, whole cloves, and coarse sea salt.

  2. Pour in enough vinegar to cover the mixture.

  3. Boil for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 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

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the pickle and gives it a crisp, firm texture.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and body as they soften during the long boil.
Green tomatoes
Add tartness and moisture that blends into the vinegar mixture.
Red peppers
Add sweetness, color and mild heat to the pickle.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavor that mellows during cooking.
Vinegar
Acidity preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its tang.

The step that matters

Boil for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stirring keeps the vegetables from sticking and scorching on the bottom of the pot, and the boil lets the vinegar and spices penetrate the vegetables evenly.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, onion, pepper, sugar, mustard, allspice, clove):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, onion, pepper, sugar, mustard, allspice, clove. 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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