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French Pickles

Pickled cucumbers and onions in a sweet vinegar brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

French Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Arrange cucumbers and onions in alternate layers.

  2. Cover with salt and let stand for 1 hour.

  3. Wash in cold water and drain.

Make the pickles

  1. In a pot, mix sugar, ginger, mustard seed, celery seed, salt, pepper, and vinegar.

  2. Warm the mixture until fairly warm.

  3. Add the cucumbers and onions to the warm dressing.

  4. Bring to a boil.

  5. Can the 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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the crisp, bulky body of the pickle once sliced and brined.
Onions
Add bulk and mild sweetness that softens during cooking.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the cucumbers and onions, firming their texture.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Vinegar
Supplies the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle flavour.

The step that matters

Wash and drain after salting. Salting draws out a lot of liquid and salt; rinsing and draining removes surface salt so the pickle is not overly salty, while the cucumbers stay firm.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, onion, sugar, mustard, celery, pepper, vinegar. 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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