Skip to main content
Main

Chow-chow

A pickled vegetable mixture of cauliflower, onions, cucumbers, string beans, mustard seeds, cayenne pepper, turmeric, horseradish, vinegar, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and horseradish 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

  1. Scald the spices and vinegar together.

  2. Pour the boiling mixture over the vegetables.

  3. Once cooled, mix 1 pound of mustard with vinegar and add to the pickles.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cauliflower + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

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

  3. Cauliflower + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together514 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cauliflower + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together139 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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 vegetables and gives the pickle its sharp taste.
Black mustard seed
Adds pungent, sharp flavour to the pickling liquid as it steeps in the hot vinegar.
White mustard seed
Adds milder pungent flavour and a slight bite to the pickling liquid.
Cucumbers
Firm vegetables that soften slightly in the hot brine while keeping some crunch.
Cauliflower
Firm florets that soften in the hot brine while holding their shape and absorbing flavour.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and body to the vinegar mixture that coats the pickles.

The step that matters

Adding the mustard after cooling. Mustard's sharp flavour is volatile and dulls with prolonged heat, so mixing it in once the liquid has cooled keeps the pickle bright and pungent.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, cucumber, beans, mustard, pepper, turmeric, horseradish. 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

Cauliflower SoupCauliflower Soup28 recipesCream of Cauliflower SoupCream of Cauliflower Soup22 recipesCreamed CauliflowerCreamed Cauliflower17 recipesHorseradish SauceHorseradish Sauce17 recipes