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Chowchow Pickle

A pickled cabbage dish with onions, peppers, tomatoes, horseradish, mustard, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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. Combine cabbage, onions, green peppers, green tomatoes, and horseradish in a large bowl.

  2. Cover with coarse sea salt and water, then boil until tender.

  3. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

Pickle

  1. In a pot, boil vinegar, turmeric, and white mustard seed.

  2. Pour the hot mixture over the vegetables.

  3. Once cooled, add the mixed mustard and celery seed.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turmeric + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Horseradish + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together437 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Cabbage
Provides the bulk of the crunchy texture in the relish.
Green tomatoes
Add tartness and body that holds up to long pickling.
Vinegar
Supplies the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
White mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour that mellows during pickling.
Horseradish
Contributes a hot, pungent bite to the mixture.
Onions
Add savoury depth and sweetness as they soften in the boil.

The step that matters

Straining before pouring the hot vinegar. Vegetables that still hold excess water dilute the vinegar brine, weakening its acidity and shortening how long the pickle keeps well. Draining thoroughly lets the hot vinegar mixture penetrate and preserve the vegetables properly.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, onion, pepper, horseradish, vinegar, turmeric, mustard. 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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