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Pickle Lily

A pickled vegetable mixture of tomatoes, peppers, onions, and cabbage seasoned with cloves, cinnamon, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 Lily

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

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

  2. Salt the mixture and let it drain overnight.

Cook and pack

  1. Boil the drained mixture in strong vinegar until tender.

  2. Drain again and mix in the ground cloves, ground cinnamon, and sugar.

  3. Pack the mixture solidly into jars and cover with boiling vinegar.

Store

  1. In the spring, fill empty fruit cans for summer use.

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

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

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

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

  5. Onion + cabbagetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 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
Form the bulk of the relish and contribute tartness and body when cooked.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharp vinegar and spices.
Strong vinegar
Acidity that softens the chopped vegetables and helps preserve the mixture.
Ground cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice flavour.
Ground cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet spice aroma.
Cabbage
Adds bulk and a firm texture that holds up during long cooking.

The step that matters

Boil until tender, then drain well. Cooking in vinegar softens the chopped vegetables, but excess liquid left in the mixture would dilute the sugar and spices and make the packed jars watery and less stable. Draining after cooking keeps the texture firm and the mixture concentrated.

Swap the onion

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

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

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