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Chow-chow

A pickled vegetable mixture of cucumbers, onions, string beans, cauliflower, celery, sweet peppers, mustard, curry powder, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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. Soak cucumbers, onions, string beans, cauliflower, celery, and sweet peppers in a strong saltwater solution overnight.

  2. In the morning, drain the brine and cut the vegetables into pieces that fit into glass jars.

  3. Scald the vegetables in a weak saltwater solution. Do not cover while scalding.

Pickle and jar

  1. In a pot, combine mustard and curry powder with vinegar and bring to a boil.

  2. Pack the pickles into jars and pour the hot liquid over them.

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 + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Beans + cauliflowertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that gives the pickle its characteristic bite.
Curry powder
Provides aromatic spice flavor that colors and seasons the pickling liquid.
Vinegar
Acidifies the liquid, preserving the vegetables and giving them tang.
Cucumbers
Form the crisp, firm bulk of the pickle and absorb the brine and spiced liquid.

The step that matters

Scald in a weak saltwater solution without covering. Scalding in weak brine softens the vegetables slightly while keeping them crisp, and leaving the pot uncovered lets volatile compounds and steam escape rather than trapping them, so the vegetables do not turn soggy or take on off flavors.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, beans, cauliflower, celery, pepper, mustard, vinegar. 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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