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French Pickles

A pickled green tomato and onion relish flavored with cinnamon, allspice, cayenne, mustard, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

French Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice the green tomatoes and onions.

  2. Sprinkle the sliced vegetables with coarse sea salt and let them sit overnight.

  3. In the morning, drain the vegetables.

  4. Boil the drained vegetables in a mixture of weak vinegar and water for 15 minutes.

Make the pickle

  1. In a large pot, combine ground cinnamon, allspice, cayenne pepper, vinegar, brown sugar, white mustard seed, yellow mustard, and ground cloves.

  2. Add the boiled tomatoes and onions to the pot.

  3. Boil everything together for 15 minutes.

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. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  5. Cinnamon + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 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

Green tomatoes
Form the bulk of the pickle and soften into tender pieces during boiling.
Onions
Add savory bulk and sweetness as they cook down into the pickle.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that preserves and flavors the pickle.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
White mustard seed
Contributes a sharp, pungent flavor that mellows during cooking.

The step that matters

Salting and draining the vegetables overnight. Salt draws water out of the sliced vegetables through osmosis. Draining removes that liquid, so the pickle stays firm rather than watery and diluted.

Swap the onion

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

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

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