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French Chow Chow

A pickled vegetable mixture of cucumbers, onions, tomatoes, cauliflower, and peppers in a mustard‑turmeric‑flour‑sugar brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and cauliflower match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 584 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

French Chow Chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Combine large green cucumbers, small cucumbers, button onions, green tomatoes, cauliflower, and green peppers in weak brine.

  2. Let the mixture stand for 24 hours.

  3. Scald the mixture in the same brine.

  4. Drain the mixture through cheesecloth.

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, make a paste with mustard, turmeric, flour, and brown sugar, moistening with a little vinegar.

  2. Add the remaining vinegar to the paste.

  3. Stir the mixture on the stove until smooth and thick.

  4. Add all the pickles to the thickened mixture. Stir to combine.

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 + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

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

  2. Cauliflower + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together514 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 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

Cucumbers
Provide the crisp, firm bulk of the pickle.
Cauliflower
Adds firm texture and absorbs the sauce flavour.
Mustard
Supplies the sharp, pungent flavour that defines the relish.
Flour
Thickens the sauce into a smooth, thick consistency.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and flavours the pickle.

The step that matters

Make the paste smooth before stirring it into the vinegar. Flour clumps if it meets liquid unmixed. Moistening the dry mustard, turmeric, flour and sugar with a little vinegar first makes a smooth paste that thickens evenly on the stove instead of forming lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, tomato, cauliflower, pepper, mustard, turmeric, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, tomato, cauliflower, pepper, mustard, turmeric, flour. 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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