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Tomato Lilli

A boiled pickle of tomatoes, cabbage, onions, peppers, and spices, sweetened with brown sugar and finished with vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,645 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Lilli

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the tomatoes, cabbage, onions, and peppers.

Cook

  1. In a large pot, combine all the chopped vegetables with salt, cloves, black pepper, mustard seed, and brown sugar.

  2. Cover the mixture with vinegar.

  3. Boil slowly for 2 hours.

  4. If desired, stir in ground mustard before serving.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  4. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

Tomatoes
Provide the bulk and moisture that become the body of the pickle.
Cabbage
Adds firm texture and body that holds up during long slow cooking.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps preserve it.

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, cabbage, onion, pepper, clove, sugar, vinegar):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Cucumberfits about as well
  4. Okrafits less well

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