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Preserve

Chow Chow

A preserved vegetable made by pickling cucumbers, cauliflower, onions, and string beans with mustard, spices, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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. Place cucumbers, cauliflower, onions, and string beans in brine for one week.

  2. Soak in water until fresh enough to use.

Make and bottle

  1. In a kettle, combine mustard, cinnamon, mace, Cayenne pepper, brown sugar, and turmeric.

  2. Cover with vinegar and boil slowly for five minutes.

  3. Bottle the mixture while hot.

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. Cauliflower + beanstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Beans + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 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 balances the sweetness of the brown sugar.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that offsets the acidity of the vinegar and mustard.
Turmeric
Contributes a yellow colour and earthy, bitter flavor.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the vegetables and sharpens the overall flavor.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cauliflower, onion, beans, mustard, cinnamon, pepper. 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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