Skip to main content
Main

Pickle Lilly

A pickled mixture of green tomatoes, onions, and green peppers seasoned with salt, vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, all-spice, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Pickle Lilly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the green tomatoes, onions, and green peppers finely.

  2. Layer the chopped vegetables with coarse sea salt in a jar and let stand overnight.

  3. Drain the vegetables.

Cook and pickle

  1. Cook them in water until tender.

  2. Drain again.

  3. Add vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, all-spice, and cloves, and mix well.

  4. Store in a jar.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the pickle and its tart, firm body once cooked.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that preserves and flavours the pickle.
Sugar
Balances the sharp acidity of the vinegar with sweetness.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the vegetables overnight, firming them and reducing wateriness.

The step that matters

Draining after the overnight salt rest. Salt draws water out of the vegetables, and draining them well removes that liquid. If too much water stays in, the pickle becomes diluted and watery, weakening its texture and keeping vinegar from penetrating evenly.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

More pickled green tomatoes recipes

Sweet 11and Peppers 3 See all 57 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes