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German Chow-chow

A pickled vegetable relish made with onions, peppers, tomatoes, cabbage, cauliflower, pickles, salt, mustard, sugar, flour, turmeric, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and cauliflower match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 305 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

German Chow-chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the onions, green peppers, green tomatoes, cabbage, cauliflower, and pickles finely.

  2. Add 1 cup of coarse sea salt and cover with cold water.

  3. Boil the mixture for 30 minutes.

  4. Drain the mixture well.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, mix 1 tablespoon mustard, 2½ cups sugar, 1 cup flour, and 1 tablespoon turmeric to form a paste.

  2. In a pot, boil 2 quarts of vinegar.

  3. Mix the boiled vinegar with the paste.

  4. Stir well without letting it thicken.

Combine and bottle

  1. Pour the mixture over the drained vegetables and bottle.

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. Cabbage + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together305 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 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

Flour
Thickens the dressing into a smooth, pourable paste with the vinegar.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and pickles.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its tang.
Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the relish, contributing crisp texture after boiling and draining.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour to the dressing.

The step that matters

Stir the dressing without letting it thicken. Flour thickens as it heats and can clump if it is not kept moving, leaving lumps and an uneven texture in the finished relish.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, pepper, cabbage, cauliflower, mustard, sugar, flour):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, cabbage, cauliflower, mustard, sugar, 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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