Skip to main content
Main

Chow Chow Pickles

A pickled cucumber dish preserved in vinegar, mustard seeds, juniper berries, celery seed, green peppers, sugar, onions, and alum.

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

Prepare

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

Pickle

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

  2. Pour the hot vinegar mixture over the cucumbers and let them stand for one day.

  3. Repeat this process for three or four mornings.

  4. Mix the mustard with some vinegar and pour it over the cucumbers.

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
Form the body of the pickle, becoming firmer and crisp after salting and brining.
Cider vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickle its tang.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
White mustard seed
Adds a mild, sharp mustard flavor to the brine.
Black mustard seed
Adds a more pungent, sharp mustard flavor to the brine.
Mustard
Adds pungency and a sharp, hot bite to the finished pickle.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot vinegar mixture over the cucumbers. Hot acidic liquid softens the cucumbers and carries the vinegar and spices into them. Repeating the hot pour over several mornings lets the flavor and acidity penetrate further.

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

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipesCelery Cream SoupCelery Cream Soup15 recipes