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Chow-Chow

A pickled relish of cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, cauliflower, peppers, celery, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 ↓

Chow-Chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut the cucumbers, green tomatoes, onions, and cauliflower into small pieces.

  2. Sprinkle salt over the vegetables and let them stand for 24 hours.

  3. Rinse off the salt and drain the vegetables.

Make the pickling liquid

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar, celery, horseradish, turmeric, ground cloves, black pepper, sugar, white mustard seed, and ground mustard.

  2. Boil the mixture for 15 minutes.

Pickle and store

  1. Pour the hot vinegar mixture over the prepared vegetables.

  2. Store the mixture in bottles or glass jars.

  3. Let the chow-chow age for a few weeks; it tastes better when aged.

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 + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together139 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Small cucumbers
Provide the crisp, firm bulk of the relish that holds up to pickling.
Green tomatoes
Add tart acidity and body to the chopped vegetable mixture.
Cauliflower
Adds firm texture and absorbs the pickling vinegar and spices.
Vinegar
Acidifies the mixture, preserving the vegetables and giving the sharp pickled flavor.
White mustard seed
Contributes pungent, sharp flavor that mellows during aging.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard with sweetness.

The step that matters

Rinsing and draining after the salt rest. Salt draws water out of the vegetables, and rinsing removes surface salt. Draining well keeps the relish crisp and stops excess liquid from diluting the vinegar mixture.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, tomato, cauliflower, pepper, vinegar, celery, horseradish. 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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