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Chowchow Pickle

A fermented pickle made from tomatoes, cabbage, onions, cucumbers, and spices, cured in vinegar and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard 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 ↓

Chowchow Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, and cabbage into small pieces.

  2. Pack the chopped vegetables in salt and let them sit overnight.

  3. Drain the salt and soak the vegetables in a mixture of vinegar and water for 1–2 days, then drain again.

Make the pickling liquor

  1. Boil the spices in ½ gallon of vinegar with 3 pounds of brown sugar, then pour it over the vegetables while hot.

  2. Repeat this process for 3 days.

  3. Once cooled, mix 5 ounces of mustard with ½ pint of the best salad oil.

  4. Add 2 quarts of vinegar to the mixture when it is cold.

Mature

  1. Let the pickle mature for 2 months.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

  4. Cabbage + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Green tomatoes
Provides the bulk of the pickle and absorbs the vinegar and sugar liquor as it softens.
Cabbage
Adds crunch and bulk that holds its texture through long soaking in vinegar.
Cucumbers
Contributes crisp texture and body to the chopped vegetable mixture.
Onions
Adds sharp flavour that mellows during the long maturing period.
White mustard seed
Supplies pungent flavour that carries through the vinegar and sugar liquor.
Brown sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness and body.

The step that matters

Salting and draining the vegetables. Salt draws water out of the chopped vegetables by osmosis. Draining well before the vinegar soak keeps the pickle crisp and stops the liquor from being diluted.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Cauliflowerfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, onion, cucumber, horseradish, mustard, celery, turmeric. 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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