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Chow-chow

A pickled vegetable salad with tomatoes, onions, cauliflower, celery, cabbage, cucumbers, horseradish, mustard, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and cucumber 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 ↓

Chow-chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the onions and tomatoes together, sprinkle with coarse sea salt, and let drain in a colander overnight.

Make the salad

  1. In the morning, chop all the ingredients and mix them together.

  2. Scald the vinegar without boiling it, then add the horseradish.

  3. Combine all ingredients and mix well.

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

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

  2. Horseradish + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together139 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cauliflower + cabbagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together305 recipes

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

  4. Horseradish + cucumbertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

  5. Horseradish + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 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
Provide the bulk of the salad and release moisture that salting draws out.
Onions
Add sharp, savoury flavour and crunch to the mix.
White wine vinegar
Adds acidity that preserves the salad and sharpens its flavour.
Horseradish
Contributes pungent heat that mellows as the salad rests.
Brown sugar
Balances the acidity of the vinegar with sweetness.
Cauliflower
Adds firm texture and bulk to the chopped vegetable mix.

The step that matters

Salting and draining the tomatoes and onions overnight. Salt draws water out of the vegetables through osmosis. Skipping or shortening this step leaves excess liquid that dilutes the dressing and makes the salad watery.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, horseradish, sugar, cauliflower, celery, cabbage, cucumber):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, horseradish, sugar, cauliflower, celery, cabbage, cucumber. 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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