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Bottled Chow-chow

A pickled vegetable relish made with pickles, onions, green beans, tomatoes, cauliflower, vinegar, mustard, oil of mustard, cayenne pepper, and peppers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Bottled Chow-chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Soak the onions in brine for 12 hours, then peel them.

  2. If the beans are large, break them.

  3. Slice the green tomatoes and cut up the cauliflower.

  4. Soak all vegetables in brine for 24 hours.

Make the mustard vinegar

  1. Mix 1 pound of mustard with a little vinegar and add it to 1 gallon of vinegar.

  2. Tie the spices in a white cloth and boil them in the vinegar before adding the mustard.

Pack and seal

  1. Layer the vegetables in pickle jars, filling them three-quarters full.

  2. Add bits of red and green pepper while filling the jars.

  3. Top off with the mustard mixture and seal the jars tightly.

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. Beans + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Beans + cauliflowertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

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

  4. Beans + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

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

  5. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 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

Cauliflower
Adds bulk and a firm, crisp texture to the pickle.
Green tomatoes
Add acidity and firm body that holds up to pickling.
Mustard
Adds sharp pungency and flavor to the vinegar that covers the vegetables.
Vinegar
Acts as the preserving liquid, adding sourness and keeping the vegetables acidic.
Silver onions
Add sweetness and savory body as they soften in the brine and pickle.

The step that matters

Soak the vegetables in brine. Salt draws water out of the vegetables through osmosis, leaving them firmer and less watery so they stay crisp in the vinegar and do not dilute the pickling liquid.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, tomato, cauliflower, vinegar, mustard, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, tomato, cauliflower, vinegar, mustard, 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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