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Salad

Chow-chow

A pickled relish of cucumbers, peppers, onions, and tomatoes with spices and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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 the vegetables

  1. Wash cucumbers, green peppers, onions, and green tomatoes in cold salted water and drain well.

  2. Chop the vegetables finely and layer them in a wooden tub or keg, sprinkling with salt and small red garden peppers.

  3. Let the mixture stand overnight.

  4. The next morning, drain off the salt brine.

Make the chow-chow

  1. In a preserving kettle, combine the vegetables with celery seed, white mustard seed, rice, horseradish, cloves, peppercorns, and brown sugar.

  2. Mix turmeric and ground mustard with cold water and add to the vegetables.

  3. Cover the mixture with cold vinegar and boil gently for half an hour, stirring occasionally.

Store

  1. Cool the chow-chow and store in airtight jars or tight wooden kegs, topping with a layer of good salad oil to exclude air.

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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

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

  5. Cucumber + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 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
Make up the bulk of the relish, contributing crisp texture and fresh body to the pickle.
Onions
Add pungency and aroma that mellow during the long salting and simmering.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard.
Cold vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the vegetables and sharpens the flavour.
White mustard seed
Contributes pungent, sharp flavour that deepens during cooking.

The step that matters

Draining the salt brine the next morning. Salt draws large amounts of water out of the vegetables overnight. Draining it thoroughly removes excess liquid and excess salt, so the relish stays crisp and is not overly salty once vinegar and sugar are added.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pepper, tomato, celery, mustard, rice, 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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