Skip to main content
Main

Chow Chow

A pickled relish made from tomatoes, onions, cabbage, peppers, and spices, preserved in vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Horseradish and mustard 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 green tomatoes, ripe tomatoes, onions, cabbage, and peppers.

  2. Sprinkle the chopped vegetables with salt and let them sit overnight.

Make the chow chow

  1. In a porcelain kettle, combine the salted vegetables with brown sugar, horseradish, black pepper, mustard, mustard seed, celery seed, and mace.

  2. Add vinegar and boil until the mixture is clear.

Jar

  1. Pour the chow chow into a jar, or pack it into gem jars.

  2. Seal tightly.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cabbage + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 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

Green tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the relish and a tart, firm texture.
Cabbage
Adds crunch and bulk, absorbing the salt and sugar as it sits.
Onions
Add sharp aromatic flavor that mellows during cooking.
Brown sugar
Balances the vinegar and salt with sweetness and depth.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the relish and sharpens its flavor.
Salt
Draws water out of the vegetables, firming them and helping preserve the mixture.

The step that matters

Boil until the mixture is clear. Boiling in vinegar softens the vegetables and drives off excess moisture, while the acid helps preserve the relish. Stopping too early leaves it watery and less safely preserved.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, cabbage, pepper, sugar, horseradish, mustard, celery. 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.

More chow chow recipes

Relish 49Pickle 25Pickles 16Tomato 9Cucumber 4Salad 3 See all 120 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesRed CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipes