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Pickle Lilly

A pickled green tomato relish with peppers, onions, cabbage, vinegar, molasses, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 481 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pickle Lilly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cover chopped green tomatoes with water and salt; let stand for 24 hours.

  2. Rinse tomatoes with clear water.

  3. In a kettle, combine tomatoes, red peppers, onions, and cabbage.

Cook and pickle

  1. Cover with equal parts vinegar and water; scald for 20 minutes.

  2. Drain the mixture and add molasses, ground cloves, horseradish, and mustard seed.

  3. Transfer to a jar and cover with cold vinegar.

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. Cabbage + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  4. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Clove + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 after salting and scalding.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and a dark color to balance the vinegar's sharpness.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
White mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavor that carries through the pickle.
Onions
Contribute savory flavor and moisture to the mixture.
Red peppers
Add sweetness, color and mild heat to the mixture.

The step that matters

Salting the tomatoes for 24 hours. Salt draws water out of the chopped tomatoes through osmosis. Rinsing afterward removes surface salt, and the drawn-out water keeps the pickle from turning soggy and diluted.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, onion, cabbage, vinegar, molasses, clove, horseradish):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, onion, cabbage, vinegar, molasses, clove, horseradish. 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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