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Chow-chow

A pickled vegetable relish made with mixed vegetables, brine, and boiling vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and radish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 212 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Chow-chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fill a two-gallon jar with small pieces of mixed vegetables.

  2. Cover the vegetables with a strong brine and let it stand for three days.

Pickle

  1. Pour off the brine and pour boiling vinegar over the vegetables.

  2. Leave the vegetables in the vinegar for one week.

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. Cucumber + radishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together212 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Cauliflower + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

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

  3. Cauliflower + radishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together55 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  4. Cucumber + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  5. Radish + horsetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together529 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Mixed vegetables
Provide the bulk of the relish, with their texture softened and firmed by brining and vinegar.
Strong brine
Draws water out of the vegetables and seasons them before the vinegar is added.
Boiling vinegar
Acidifies the vegetables, preserving them and giving the relish its tangy flavour.

The step that matters

Pouring off the brine before adding the vinegar. Salty brine left in the jar would dilute the vinegar and make the relish too salty and less acidic, weakening its preservation and flavour balance.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, cucumber, radish, pepper, tomato, horse, vinegar):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, cucumber, radish, pepper, tomato, horse, 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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