Skip to main content
Snack

Chow Chow Pickles

Pickled cucumbers with mustard seeds, juniper berries, celery seed, green peppers, sugar, onions, and alum in vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Brine the cucumbers

  1. Soak the cucumbers in a mixture of salt and water, covered, for three days.

Make the pickling liquor

  1. Boil the cucumbers in the vinegar with the mustard seeds, juniper berries, celery seed, green peppers, sugar, onions, and alum for fifteen minutes.

  2. Tie the spices in cheesecloth bags.

Pour and rest

  1. Pour the hot vinegar over the cucumbers.

  2. Let the cucumbers sit for one day.

  3. Repeat this process for three or four mornings.

Finish and bottle

  1. Mix the mustard with the vinegar.

  2. Pour the mixture over the cucumbers.

  3. Seal the cucumbers in bottles.

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

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

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  5. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the main body of the pickle, which firms and absorbs the brine over several days.
Cider vinegar
Supplies the acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickle its sharp flavor.
Sugar
Balances the sharp acidity of the vinegar with sweetness.
Mustard
Adds pungency and sharp flavor to the finished pickling liquid.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and seasons them during the initial soak.

The step that matters

Repeating the hot vinegar pour over several mornings. Each hot pour draws flavor into the cucumbers and helps them stay crisp while the brine works. Skipping or rushing the repeats leaves the pickles under-flavored and less well preserved.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, cider, vinegar, mustard, celery, pepper, sugar):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cider, vinegar, mustard, celery, pepper, sugar. 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.

You might also like

FrittersFritters56 recipesCrisp CrackersCrisp Crackers7 recipes