Name: Chow-chow
Ingredients: 2 large heads of cabbage; ½ peck of green tomatoes; 18 peppers; 10 cucumbers; 8 onions; 3 tablespoons dry mustard; 2 tablespoons brown sugar; 2 tablespoons celery seed; cider vinegar

Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Chow-chow

Ingredients

Directions

Chop the cabbage, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and onions.
Sprinkle with salt and let sit overnight.
Drain the water and cover the mixture with cider vinegar.

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.

Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,169 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,281 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,645 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,405 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, tomato, pepper, cucumber, mustard, sugar, celery):

Lettucefits better
Horseradishfits better
Broccolifits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, tomato, pepper, cucumber, mustard, sugar, celery. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.