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Salad

Chow Chow

A fermented pickle made with green tomatoes, peppers, onions, cabbage, cauliflower, salt, mustard seeds, ground mustard, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and cauliflower match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 305 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chow Chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

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

  2. Mix all the chopped vegetables together and pack them in a large jar, layering with salt at a ratio of ½ pint of salt for each peck of vegetables.

  3. Let the mixture stand overnight.

  4. Squeeze out the brine from the vegetables.

Add mustard and vinegar

  1. Add the white mustard seed and ground mustard to the vegetables and mix well.

  2. Transfer the mixture to the jar for storage.

  3. Boil enough vinegar to cover the mixture and pour it over the chow chow.

  4. Seal the jar tightly.

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 + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Cauliflower + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

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

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

  5. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 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 pickle and release moisture that the salt draws out.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables, firming them and preserving them before pickling.
White mustard seed
Adds pungent flavor and sharpness that carries through the vinegar.
Ground mustard
Adds sharp, pungent mustard flavor and helps thicken the pickle.
Vinegar
Acidifies the pickle, preserving it and giving it its tangy flavor.

The step that matters

Squeezing out the brine. Salted vegetables release a lot of liquid. If the brine is not squeezed out well, the pickle stays watery and can dilute the vinegar, weakening both texture and preservation.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, onion, cabbage, cauliflower, mustard, vinegar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, onion, cabbage, cauliflower, mustard, 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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