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Salad

Uncooked Piccalilli

A pickled relish made from green tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, onions, spices, and vinegar, left to ripen for a month.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 ↓

Uncooked Piccalilli

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop green peppers after removing seeds and shred cabbage finely, then measure.

  2. Chop tomatoes and onions, add salt, and place all in a crock.

  3. Pour boiling water over the mixture to cover and let stand for 24 hours.

  4. Pour the mixture into a bag to drain until dry.

Pickle and ripen

  1. Return to the crock and add remaining ingredients.

  2. Mix all well and pour enough vinegar over to cover.

  3. Let ripen for 1 month before using.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

Green tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the relish and a tart, fresh-vegetable base once pickled.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables, so they drain dry and stay crisp in the pickle.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the relish its sharp tang.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Mustard seed
Contributes pungent, sharp flavour that defines the piccalilli character.
Onions
Add savoury pungency and bulk to the chopped vegetable mixture.

The step that matters

Draining the salted vegetables until dry. Salt and boiling water pull moisture out of the chopped vegetables. If they are not drained well, excess water dilutes the vinegar and the relish can spoil or turn watery during ripening.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cinnamon, pepper, allspice, cabbage, clove, onion, mustard):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, pepper, allspice, cabbage, clove, onion, 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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