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Chow Chow

A pickle of cucumbers, onions, cauliflower, and green peppers in a vinegar and sugar brine with mustard, celery seed, flour, and turmeric.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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. Combine large cucumbers, small cucumbers, large onions, small onions, cauliflower, and green peppers in separate dishes covered with weak brine. Let stand overnight and then drain.

Make the pickling liquid

  1. In a pot, combine sugar and vinegar. Bring to a boil.

  2. Make a paste with flour, mustard, and turmeric. Slowly add this to the boiling mixture while stirring quickly. Let it boil.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 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

Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its sharp flavor.
Flour
Thickens the boiling vinegar mixture into a smooth, coating sauce.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent, sharp flavor that stands up to the vinegar.
Cucumbers
Form the crisp, firm body of the pickle.
Onions
Add savory bulk and a sharp bite to the pickle.

The step that matters

Adding the flour paste to the boiling mixture. Flour clumps if dropped in unmixed or added too fast. Adding it slowly while stirring quickly disperses the starch so it thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cauliflower, pepper, sugar, vinegar, 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.

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