A slice of coarse country pâté on a wooden board beside a small heap of glossy whole cornichons, a halved cornichon, fresh small cucumbers with their yellow blossoms, mustard seeds and a sprig of tarragon

Cornichons and Pickles: The Complete Guide

A cornichon is a small pickle: a cucumber picked very small, put into sharp vinegar with onion, mustard seed and often tarragon, and eaten whole beside pâté, raclette or a cheese course. Around it sits a large family of pickles, the American dill, the sweet gherkin, the malossol and the barrel-fermented sour, and a jar can use any of those words and mean something different. What separates them is printed on the jar, and the skill is knowing which words are law, which are trade custom and which name only a recipe. The vegetable itself is in the guide to what a cornichon is, and the field work in the guide to how cornichons are grown and picked.

Cornichon, gherkin, pickle: the names

The international standard for pickled cucumbers, Codex Standard 115, defines the product as cucumbers preserved by acidification to a pH of 4.6 or less, either by fermentation or by adding vinegar or an edible acid, and it allows pasteurization, refrigeration or a chemical preservative on top. It permits the product to be sold as pickled cucumbers, cucumber pickles, pickles or gherkins, and it notes that in some countries cucumber means the large fruit and gherkin, cornichon in French, means the small one. It draws one size line: whole cucumbers may be designated gherkins when they are no wider than 27 millimeters.

The American grade standard for pickles has its own size names, and the class now called petite was called midget until 2019, when the Department of Agriculture renamed it. The French trade grades size by count per kilogram, the calibre described below.

The pickle family, style by style

Codex sorts pickles into sub-types by their main flavor, and it measures each sub-type's acid, salt and sugar in the liquid once the jar has equalized. A sour pickle runs 0.7 to 3.5 percent acidity, counted as acetic acid, with 1 to 5 percent salt. A sweet-sour pickle carries 1.5 to under 14 percent soluble solids, not counting salt, and a sweet pickle 14 percent or more. Both have a lower acidity range than the sour type: 0.5 to 2.0 percent for sweet-sour and 0.5 to 2.5 for sweet. A French technical sheet for a Hugo Reitzel cornichon tin puts it at 1.9 to 2.9 percent acid, 1.9 to 2.9 percent salt and a pH of 4.0, inside the standard's ranges for a sour pickle.

The second split is how the acid got there. The National Center for Home Food Preservation separates fermented pickles, which cure in salt brine for weeks, from fresh-pack or quick-process pickles, which are not fermented and are covered with vinegar and seasonings, sometimes after a few hours or a night in brine. The classic French cornichon is a vinegar pickle; the Reitzel sheet lists spirit vinegar among its ingredients.

Style What is in the jar Codex sub-type On the plate
French cornichon Very small cucumbers in spirit vinegar with onion, mustard seed and often tarragon Sour Whole, beside pâté, rillettes, raclette and cold meats
Aigre-doux The same small cucumber in a vinegar sweetened with sugar Sweet-sour Cheese, cold roast pork, ham
Malossol A larger calibre in a brine seasoned with dill, garlic and bay; Maison Marc's version also lists vinegar and sugar Depends on the recipe Sliced onto buttered rye, diced into sauces, eaten as a vegetable
American dill Larger cucumbers, whole or cut, with dill and often garlic; made either fresh-pack or fermented Dill Sandwiches, burgers, the side of the plate
Sweet and bread-and-butter pickles Sliced cucumbers in sugar-heavy vinegar, often with onion Sweet or sweet-sour Sandwiches, burgers, potato salad
Lacto-fermented pickle Cucumbers cured in salt brine with no vinegar, left unpasteurized and kept cold Cured type (a pack type, not a sub-type) Eaten for the sourness; left unpasteurized, it can carry live cultures

Only the fermented pickles count as fermented food: the last row, and those American dills that are cured in brine rather than packed in vinegar. The ISAPP consensus statement on fermented foods, published in Nature Reviews Gastroenterology and Hepatology in 2021, defines a fermented food as one made through desired microbial growth, lists vegetables pickled in vinegar without a fermentation step as not fermented, and notes that fermented vegetables that are heat-treated or pasteurized may carry no live microorganisms by the time they are eaten. A vinegar-packed cornichon is not a fermented food by that definition.

The calibre, the grade the trade prints

French cornichons are graded by calibre, the number of cornichons in a kilogram. A higher number means a smaller cornichon. The trade sheets print it plainly: a Reitzel foodservice tin at 80 to 119 per kilogram, a Toquelia tin at 120 to 149 and a Reitzel tin at 60 to 79. The French words attached to those numbers vary by seller. The 120/149 calibre is très fins on one distributor's sheet and fins in another's listing, and the Reitzel 80/119 sheet attaches no word at all. The number stays fixed from seller to seller; the word does not.

The calibre converts straight into what lands on the plate. A kilogram divided by 150 is under seven grams per cornichon. A kilogram divided by 60 is nearly seventeen grams. The table runs the numbers and counts how many fit in a jar holding 210 grams of drained cornichons, the drained weight on a French retail jar from Reitzel.

Calibre, per kg Grams each Word a seller may print In a 210 g drained jar
150 and above Under 6.7 g Not on the cited sheets 32 or more
120 to 149 6.7 to 8.3 g Très fins, or fins 25 to 31
80 to 119 8.4 to 12.5 g None on the cited trade sheet 17 to 25
60 to 79 12.7 to 16.7 g None on the cited listing 13 to 17

Fin is a size word on these sheets, not a quality grade. A jar at 150 per kilogram and a tin at 80 suit different jobs: the smaller cornichon is eaten whole, and the larger one is sliced or chopped into a sauce.

Reading the origin line

France 24 reported in 2017 that about 80 percent of the 60 million jars of cornichons sold in France each year held Indian-grown cucumbers, with about 20 percent from eastern Europe. The report gave the reasons: the crop is picked once a year in France and three times a year in India, and Reitzel was paying about one euro a kilogram to Indian suppliers against five or six euros to French contract growers. The Reitzel 80/119 technical sheet shows how that reads on paper: origin France, as the place of last processing, above a raw-material line listing India, Sri Lanka, Serbia, the EU, Bosnia, Macedonia and Albania. The Toquelia sheet gives India for both origin and processing.

Two European rules govern the line. The general food information regulation, 1169/2011, requires an origin only where leaving it off would mislead. Implementing Regulation 2018/775, which has applied since 1 April 2020, adds that when a food states an origin and its primary ingredient comes from somewhere else, the label must say where that ingredient is from, or at least that it is not from the stated country, and wording as broad as EU or non-EU is allowed. So a line such as gherkins, non-EU is the rule working as intended.

French-grown cornichons exist and say so in detail. Reitzel sells a French-grown jar whose label reads French gherkins 49 percent. Maison Marc, in Chemilly-sur-Yonne in Burgundy, grows its cornichons, picks them by hand and jars them on the farm, as the Maison Marc producer guide covers. On a label, cultivé en France or récolté en France points to a French field; fabriqué en France and conditionné en France describe where the jar was made or packed.

The vinegar

On a French jar the vinegar is a large ingredient. The Reitzel 80/119 sheet gives cornichons at 48 percent of the tin, water at 29 and spirit vinegar at 17. Spirit vinegar, vinaigre d'alcool, is fermented from distilled alcohol. A jar made with wine or cider vinegar is using a different acid with a different flavor. French law, in the 1988 vinegar decree, reserves the word vinaigre for a product made by double fermentation, alcoholic and then acetic, sets a floor of 5 grams of acetic acid per 100 milliliters, 6 for wine vinegar, and forbids using the name for a blend of vinegar and food-grade acetic acid. A French label that says vinaigre means fermented vinegar. Codex also permits added acids, among them acetic, lactic and citric acid. The vinegar complete guide covers the acids in full.

The small print

Sulfites. Cucumbers held in brine between the field and the jar can be preserved with a sulfite salt. The Reitzel sheet declares cornichons with the preservative potassium metabisulfite and caps it under 100 milligrams per kilogram, the European limit for vegetables in vinegar. European rules require sulfites to be declared above 10 milligrams per kilogram, and American rules at 10 parts per million and above, so contains sulfites on a jar is a disclosure the law requires.

Calcium chloride. It appears on labels as a firming agent. Codex allows calcium chloride, lactate and gluconate up to 250 milligrams per kilogram, and the French-grown Reitzel jar uses calcium chloride.

Colors. Codex permits several, including riboflavin, copper chlorophyll, tartrazine and Sunset Yellow. In the United States, tartrazine must be named in the ingredient list as FD&C Yellow No. 5.

The garnish. Codex caps added vegetables such as pearl onions at 5 percent of the product's weight, or 30 percent in a mustard pickle. Herbs and spices are not capped. Natural flavoring, arôme naturel, appears on French jars; the Reitzel sheet lists it at five hundredths of a percent.

Drained weight and the price per cornichon

European labeling rules require a drained net weight when a solid food is packed in one of the listed liquid media, and vinegar is on the list. On two foodservice tins the ratio is close. The Reitzel 80/119 tin holds 2,120 grams drained in 4,100 net and the Toquelia tin 2,120 in 4,000, which is 52 to 53 percent cornichon by weight. Codex sets a minimum fill of 53 percent for fresh-pack whole pickles, though it measures that against the container's volume rather than the net weight.

Because a cornichon is eaten one at a time, the useful comparison is price per cornichon, and the drained weight and the calibre are enough to work it out. Divide the drained weight by the grams each from the calibre table to get the count, then divide the price by the count. A 210-gram drained jar at the 150 calibre holds 32 or more; the same weight at 60/79 holds 13 to 17, each one roughly twice to two and a half times as heavy and more often sliced than eaten whole. Where a jar prints no calibre, price per drained gram is the comparison that remains.

Reading the label: law and custom

Words on the jar Status What it means
150+, 120/149, 80/119, 60/79 Trade grade Cornichons per kilogram; the size, and with it the job
Extra-fins, très fins, fins Custom A size word whose calibre varies by seller
Gherkin, cornichon Codex A permitted product name; whole cucumbers may be designated gherkins at 27 mm wide or less
Malossol, aigre-doux A recipe Larger with dill; sweet-sour. Not a grade
Poids net égoutté, drained weight Law in Europe The cornichons without the brine
Vinaigre Law in France Fermented vinegar at 5 grams of acetic acid per 100 ml or more
French gherkins 49% Quantity declaration The share of the jar that is cucumber
Contains sulfites Law at about 10 mg/kg, in the EU and the US The preservative carried through from the brining
Firming agent: calcium chloride Permitted, capped by Codex Added to help the cucumbers stay firm
Gherkins, non-EU Law since April 2020 where another origin is claimed The cucumbers were grown outside the EU
Cultivé en France, récolté en France An origin claim A French field
Fabriqué en France, conditionné en France Processing country Where the jar was made or packed

The Reitzel tin is coded on the lid with the best-before date, production year, hour and calibre.

How long cornichons keep

The USDA FoodKeeper data lists pickles at one to three months in the refrigerator after opening; the Reitzel foodservice sheet asks for its opened tin to be finished within a month at 2 to 4°C, closed and under the brine. The Reitzel sheet gives its tin four years at room temperature before opening and the Toquelia sheet two, and both are best-before dates. Under the FDA's acidified foods rule, an acidified food has a finished equilibrium pH of 4.6 or below, and the Reitzel tin, at pH 4.0, is well under it.

State Where How long What changes
Sealed A dark, dry, cool place To the best-before date printed on the jar Too much light can leave pickles spotted, dull or faded
Opened Refrigerator One to three months by FoodKeeper; within a month on the Reitzel tin sheet Cucumbers left above the brine are one cause of soft pickles

Once the seal is broken, the jar goes in the refrigerator. Keep the pickles under the liquid; NCHFP lists too little brine to cover the cucumbers among the causes of soft pickles. NCHFP's advice against faded color is storage in a dark, dry, cool place, and the shelf-by-shelf pantry storage guide places a sealed jar beside the mustard.

Pickle faults and their causes

NCHFP keeps a list of faults in home pickles and their causes.

What the jar shows Causes NCHFP lists
Soft or slippery pickles Vinegar under 5 percent acidity, too little brine to cover the cucumbers, moldy garlic or spices, improper processing, blossom ends left on
Dark or discolored pickles Hard-water minerals, ground spices, spices left in the jar, reactive metal utensils, iodized salt
Spotted, dull or faded color Too much light, poor-quality produce
Shriveled pickles Brine, syrup or vinegar too strong, overcooking or overprocessing, dry growing weather
Strong, bitter taste Too much spice or overcooked spice, vinegar that is too strong, dry weather, salt substitutes
White sediment in the jar Additives in the salt

For soft or slippery pickles, NCHFP's rule is plain: if spoilage is evident, do not eat.

Why they go soft. Beyond the list above, NCHFP's general pickling page notes that blossoms may contain an enzyme that causes excessive softening. Calcium improves firmness, which is what a firming agent on the label is for.

Freezing. Cucumbers are on NCHFP's list of foods that do not freeze well; they thaw limp and waterlogged.

The leftover brine. A spoonful sharpens a potato salad or a dressing built to the vinaigrette ratio guide.

Salt, and the rest of the nutrition

USDA FoodData Central lists sour cucumber pickles at about 11 calories and about 1,208 milligrams of sodium per 100 grams; the panel on any jar gives its own figure. A 30-gram serving, four or five cornichons at the 150 calibre, comes to about 360 milligrams at that rate. Against the FDA Daily Value of 2,300 milligrams, that is about 16 percent. By the FDA's rule of thumb, 5 percent or less per serving is low and 20 percent or more is high, which puts it in between. Two or three cornichons beside a slice of terrine come to about half that.

On the plate

The small sharp cornichon cuts through fat. It goes whole beside pâté, rillettes, a raclette, a board of cured meats, the cheese course covered in the cheese course accompaniments guide, or a tin of sardines with butter and rye, as in the Brittany sardines guide. Chopped, it goes into tartare sauce, a sauce gribiche, egg salad or a potato salad with its own brine in the dressing. It shares the vinegar and mustard-seed logic of Dijon, covered in the Dijon mustard complete guide, and the two sit together on the same board. For a first batch at home, the French-style cornichon recipe starts from small fresh cucumbers.

The larger calibres do different work. A malossol is sliced lengthwise onto buttered bread, served beside boiled beef or diced into a sauce. An American dill belongs on a sandwich, and a sweet pickle on a burger.

Three makers

Maison Marc is the Jeannequin family's house in Chemilly-sur-Yonne, in Burgundy's Yonne department. The house grows its own cornichons, picks and sorts them by hand, and jars them on site. Its range runs from extra-fins up to malossol, the largest calibre it makes, in a brine seasoned with dill, garlic and bay (shop Maison Marc malossol cornichons). The full story is in the Maison Marc producer guide.

Edmond Fallot is the family-owned mustard mill in Beaune. Alongside the mustards, the house makes extra-fine cornichons in the small French style, with pearl onions and tarragon (shop Edmond Fallot extra-fine cornichons). The mill and its range are in the Edmond Fallot producer guide.

For the American style, Pacific Pickle Works makes pickles in the dill and sweet traditions, among them a kosher baby dill (shop Pacific Pickle Works No Big Dill), a garlic dill (shop Pacific Pickle Works Mother's Puckers) and a semi-sweet chip (shop Pacific Pickle Works Bread Buddhas).

The shop is at 263 Josephine Street in Cherry Creek, Denver. Products ship nationwide from theambrosianpantry.com. Visitors can ask staff questions in the shop.

Sources & Further Reading

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