Skip to main content
Main

Tomato Chow-chow

A pickled relish made from green tomatoes, red peppers, onions, and spices, preserved in vinegar and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Chow-chow

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice the green tomatoes, red peppers, and onions.

  2. Sprinkle the slices with coarse sea salt in layers.

  3. Let them sit under a weight overnight.

  4. Drain the vegetables and place them in a preserving pan.

Cook and bottle

  1. Add vinegar, brown sugar, horseradish, black pepper, allspice, cloves, mace, ginger, and cinnamon.

  2. Bring to a boil, then simmer slowly for 1 hour, stirring well.

  3. After boiling, add white mustard seed and bottle the mixture.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Horseradish + allspicetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together654 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Form the bulk of the relish and soften into tender pieces during long simmering.
Red peppers
Add sweetness and colour while contributing soft, mild bulk to the mixture.
Onions
Add savoury depth and body as they soften in the salted, simmered mixture.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the finished relish.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and molasses flavour that balances the vinegar's sharpness.
White mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent bite and a slight crunch to the finished relish.

The step that matters

Salting and resting overnight. Salt draws water out of the sliced vegetables by osmosis. Draining well before cooking keeps the relish thick rather than watery and lets it hold its texture.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, onion, vinegar, sugar, horseradish, allspice, clove. 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 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes