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Salad

Chow Chow

A pickled relish of cucumbers, cabbage, onions, peppers, and spices, sweetened with sugar and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Chow Chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Sprinkle cucumbers or tomatoes with coarse sea salt and let stand for 6 hours.

  2. Prepare cabbage in the same way, pressing out the water.

  3. Finely chop the onions.

  4. Pour boiling water over the onions; let stand briefly, then drain.

Combine and pickle

  1. Mix cucumbers, cabbage, onions, green peppers, and all spices together.

  2. Boil vinegar with sugar until dissolved, then pour it boiling over the mixture.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  5. Turmeric + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers or tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the relish and release water that the salt draws out.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables so they stay crisp and firm in the pickle.
Cabbage
Adds crunchy body and bulk to the relish.
Onions
Add sharp flavor that mellows during pickling.
White mustard seed
Adds pungent, sharp flavor to the pickling mixture.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.

The step that matters

Draining the salted vegetables. Salt pulls water out of cucumbers, tomatoes and cabbage. If the pressing or draining is skipped, excess water dilutes the vinegar and makes the relish watery and less crisp.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, cabbage, onion, pepper, mustard, turmeric, celery):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cabbage, onion, pepper, mustard, turmeric, 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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