Skip to main content
Salad

French Catsup

A raw vegetable salad of cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, peppers, cabbage, mustard, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cucumber and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,281 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

French Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the cucumbers, green tomatoes, onions, green peppers, and cabbage very finely.

  2. Drain the mixture in a colander and press out all the water with your hands.

Season and serve

  1. Mix all the ingredients together well and season highly with mustard and cloves.

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

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

  2. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  3. Cucumber + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 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

Cucumbers
Provide the main crisp, fresh body of the salad.
Green tomatoes
Add tart, acidic flavor and firm texture to the chopped mixture.
Cabbage
Adds crunch and bulk that holds up after the salad is pressed.
Onions
Contribute sharp aroma and savory flavor throughout the salad.

The step that matters

Pressing out the water. Cucumbers, tomatoes, and cabbage release a lot of liquid. Draining and pressing removes it, so the salad stays crisp rather than watery and diluted.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, tomato, onion, pepper, cabbage, mustard):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, tomato, onion, pepper, cabbage, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCabbage DressingCabbage Dressing9 recipesChicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipes