Skip to main content
Main

Chow Chow

A pickled vegetable relish made from green tomatoes, green peppers, onions, cabbage, cauliflower, salt, mustard, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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.

  3. Pack the vegetables in a jar, layering with ½ pint of coarse sea salt for each peck of vegetables.

  4. Let the mixture stand overnight.

Season and pickle

  1. Squeeze out the brine from the vegetables.

  2. Add the white mustard seed to the vegetables.

  3. Add the ground mustard to the vegetables and mix well.

  4. Pack the mixture back into the jar.

  5. Boil enough vinegar to cover the mixture.

  6. Pour the boiled vinegar over the vegetables.

  7. Seal the jar tightly.

  8. Store the jar for 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. 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
Make up the bulk of the relish, providing body and a tart, fresh vegetable base.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables, firming them and concentrating flavour before pickling.
White mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour and crunch to the pickled vegetables.
Ground mustard
Adds pungency and flavour that blends into the vinegar and vegetables.
Vinegar
Acidity preserves the vegetables and gives the relish its sharp, tangy character.

The step that matters

Squeezing out the brine. Salted vegetables release a lot of liquid. Removing it before repacking keeps the relish from becoming watery and lets the vinegar penetrate and preserve it properly.

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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesRed CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipes