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Tomato Piccalilli

A pickled relish of tomatoes, onions, green peppers, mustard, salt, horseradish, allspice, cloves, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Tomato Piccalilli

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the tomatoes finely and squeeze them dry.

  2. In a large bowl, mix the tomatoes with the minced onions, chopped green peppers, mustard, coarse sea salt, grated horseradish, allspice, and cloves. Macerate the mixture thoroughly.

Pickle

  1. Transfer the mixture to a stone jar and pour enough vinegar over to cover it. Make a slight hollow in the mixture to allow the vinegar to reach the bottom.

  2. Cover the jar and let it sit until all ingredients are well saturated.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Horseradish + allspicetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together654 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the bulk of the relish and release moisture that the salt and vinegar then work into.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables through osmosis, concentrating flavour and firming the texture.
Vinegar
Acidifies the mixture, preserving it and sharpening its flavour as it soaks through.
Mustard
Adds sharp pungency and flavour that balances the acidity and sweetness of the vegetables.
Powdered allspice
Contributes warm, aromatic spice notes that permeate the mixture during soaking.
Powdered cloves
Adds intense aromatic spice that infuses the vegetables over the long soak.

The step that matters

Squeezing the tomatoes dry. Excess water dilutes the salt and vinegar and softens the texture. Removing it first lets the salt draw out moisture evenly and keeps the pickle firm and well seasoned.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, mustard, horseradish, allspice, clove, 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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