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Chow Chow

A pickled vegetable relish made with pickles, cauliflower, onions, green beans, peppers, vinegar, sugar, mustard, flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 687 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Chow Chow

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a large pot, combine the vinegar, sugar, ground mustard, flour, and butter.

  2. Cook the mixture well until it thickens.

Combine and pour

  1. Pour the hot mixture over the pickles, cauliflower, onions, green beans, and red peppers.

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

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

  2. Cauliflower + green beanstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together75 recipes

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

  3. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  4. Green beans + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together116 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the hot vinegar mixture so it clings to the vegetables.
Ground mustard
Adds pungent flavor that gives the relish its characteristic sharpness.
Vinegar
Acidity that pickles the vegetables and preserves them.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard with sweetness.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture well until it thickens. Flour only thickens fully when the mixture is cooked long enough to gelatinize its starch. Undercooked flour leaves a raw, pasty taste and a thin sauce that does not coat the vegetables.

Swap the green beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, onion, vinegar, sugar, mustard, flour, butter):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Green beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, onion, vinegar, sugar, mustard, flour, butter. 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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