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Chow Chow

A pickled relish of peppers, cabbage, horseradish, mustard seed, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chow Chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the cabbage for slaw and finely chop the peppers.

Layer and pack

  1. In a jar, layer cabbage, a little salt, peppers, horseradish, and mustard seed.

  2. Repeat layers until all ingredients are used.

Add the vinegar and serve

  1. Dissolve 2 ounces of sugar in each quart of cold vinegar.

  2. Fill jars with the vinegar.

  3. Serve with hot or cold meat.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Horseradish + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Mustard + cabbagetop 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. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Peppers
Provide the main bulk and sharp flavour of the relish.
Cabbage
Adds crunch and bulk that holds its texture in the pickling liquid.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent, slightly bitter flavour that mellows during pickling.
Horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent heat that gives the relish its bite.
Cold vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the relish and sharpens its flavour.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.

The step that matters

Dissolve the sugar fully in the vinegar before filling the jars. Sugar dissolves much more readily in warm liquid than in cold, and undissolved crystals sit at the bottom rather than seasoning the relish evenly. Here the vinegar is cold, so stirring thoroughly until clear helps ensure even sweetness throughout the jars.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, mustard, horseradish, vinegar, sugar):

  1. Radishfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, mustard, horseradish, vinegar, sugar. 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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