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Mustard Chow-chow

A pickled vegetable dish of cauliflower, cucumbers, beans, onions, and peppers in mustard and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 584 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Mustard Chow-chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Parboil the cauliflower and wax beans.

  2. Cut the large cucumbers and salt them in water for 24 hours.

  3. Salt the onions for 24 hours as well.

  4. Mix all the vegetables together.

Make the mustard sauce

  1. Boil 2 quarts of cider vinegar.

  2. In a bowl, combine 1 cup flour, turmeric, and mustard with enough vinegar to make a thin paste. Add this mixture to the boiling vinegar and let it boil for 10 minutes.

Combine and jar

  1. Pour the mixture over the vegetables and boil for 1 minute. Transfer to Mason jars and seal.

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. Cauliflower + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

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

  2. Cauliflower + beanstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

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

  3. Cucumber + beanstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 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
Firm pieces that hold their shape and add bulk to the pickle.
Cucumbers
Crisp texture that softens slightly during salting and cooking.
White onions
Sweetness and savory bulk that mellows during salting and boiling.
Cider vinegar
Acidity that preserves the vegetables and sharpens the flavor.
Flour
Thickens the vinegar into a smooth, rich mustard sauce.
Mustard
Adds pungent flavor and helps emulsify the thickened sauce.

The step that matters

Make the thin paste before adding it to the vinegar. Mixing flour into hot liquid without a smooth slurry forms lumps, because starch granules clump before they can disperse. Blending flour with cold vinegar first lets the starch hydrate evenly, giving a smooth, thickened sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, cucumber, beans, pepper, cider, vinegar, flour):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, cucumber, beans, pepper, cider, vinegar, flour. 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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