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French Pickles

A pickled vegetable mixture of cauliflower, cabbage, tomatoes, onions, pickles, beans, cucumbers, and spices in vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Combine the cauliflower or cabbage, green tomatoes, small onions, pickles, green beans, and ripe cucumbers in a large bowl.

  2. Sprinkle with 1 cup of coarse sea salt and cover with 1 gallon of water. Let it drain overnight.

  3. Scald the mixture in vinegar and drain again.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a pot, combine 3 quarts of vinegar, 1 cup of sugar, 1 cup of flour, 6 tablespoons of mustard, 2 tablespoons of turmeric, and 2 tablespoons of celery seed.

  2. Cook the mixture until thickened.

  3. Pour the sauce over the pickles.

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. Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  3. Cauliflower + green beanstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Green beans + cucumbertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together95 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + green beanstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together113 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

Cauliflower or cabbage
Provides the crisp, firm bulk of the pickle mix.
Green tomatoes
Adds tartness and firm texture that holds up to pickling.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables, leaving them crisper after draining.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickles.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it coats the vegetables.
Sugar
Balances the sharp acidity of the vinegar with sweetness.

The step that matters

Cook the sauce until thickened. Flour thickens only when it is cooked long enough and stirred to prevent lumps. Undercooked flour leaves a raw taste and a thin sauce that does not coat the vegetables.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, tomato, green beans, cucumber, vinegar, sugar, flour):

  1. Broccolifits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, tomato, green beans, cucumber, vinegar, sugar, flour. 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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