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French Pickle

A pickled cucumber and onion relish flavored with vinegar, sherry, soy, cayenne, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,050 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

French Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice the cucumbers about ½ inch thick, removing the seeds.

  2. Slice the onions.

  3. Place the sliced onions on a dish and sprinkle the salt over them.

  4. Let them stand for 12 hours.

  5. Drain the cucumbers and onions well.

Pickle

  1. Combine them in a jar with the vinegar, sherry, soy, and cayenne.

  2. Seal the jar and let it sit for a month before using.

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 + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

  2. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  3. Vinegar + sherrytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together660 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Cucumber + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the bulk of the pickle and stay crisp-textured once salted and drained.
Onions
Add sharp, savoury flavour and body to the pickle.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and onions, firming them and concentrating flavour.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
Indian soy
Adds deep savoury, salty flavour and dark colour to the brine.
Sherry
Adds mellow, fortified-wine sweetness and aroma to the liquid.

The step that matters

Draining the salted vegetables well. Salt draws out water, and any moisture left behind dilutes the vinegar brine and softens the pickle, so the vegetables should be drained thoroughly before jarring.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, vinegar, sherry):

  1. Radishfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, sherry. 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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