Skip to main content
Main

French Pickles

A pickled mixture of green tomatoes and onions in a vinegar and sugar brine with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes and onions

  1. Slice the green tomatoes and onions thinly, sprinkle with coarse sea salt, and let stand overnight.

  2. Drain the mixture in a colander.

  3. Place the drained mixture in a porcelain kettle.

  4. Cover the mixture with equal parts vinegar and water.

  5. Boil for one hour.

  6. Drain again.

Make the spiced vinegar

  1. In a separate pot, boil 1½ gallons of vinegar with 3 pounds of sugar, skimming as necessary.

  2. Mix ½ teacup of French mustard with 1 ounce each of ground cloves, allspice, cinnamon, black pepper, and turmeric to a smooth paste with water.

  3. Stir the paste into the boiling vinegar mixture.

Pack and finish

  1. Use stone jars to layer the pickles.

  2. Pour in a cup of the vinegar 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. Clove + cinnamontop 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. Allspice + cinnamontop 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 soften into tender pieces during boiling.
White onions
Add savory flavor and a sharp bite that mellows during cooking.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickles and gives them their tang.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
French mustard
Adds pungency and helps emulsify the spice paste into the vinegar.

The step that matters

Boil the tomatoes and onions for one hour, then drain well. Salting draws out water, and boiling in the vinegar-water mixture softens the vegetables. Draining thoroughly removes excess liquid so the pickle stays firm and the spiced vinegar is not diluted.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes