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Salad

Old Virginia Chow-chow

A pickled relish of green tomatoes, cabbage, cucumbers, onions, and spices, sweetened with sugar and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Old Virginia Chow-chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Finely chop the green tomatoes, cabbage, cucumbers, and silver onions.

  2. Sprinkle with salt and let sit overnight.

Soak and spice

  1. In the morning, drain the brine and soak the vegetables in a mixture of vinegar and water for 1-2 days.

  2. Drain again.

  3. Mix in the spices: mustard seed, celery seed, turmeric, and cinnamon.

Make the pickle

  1. Boil 2 gallons of vinegar with 4 pounds of sugar and pour over the vegetables.

  2. Pour off the liquid and heat it again for 3 mornings.

  3. On the third morning, mix 1 pound of mustard flour with 1 pint of salad oil and combine with the vegetables.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

  4. Cabbage + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turmeric + cinnamontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,197 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its tang.
Sugar
Balances the sharp vinegar with sweetness and helps round out the overall flavour.
Mustard flour
Adds concentrated mustard pungency and thickens the dressing slightly when combined with oil.
Mustard seed
Contributes a sharp, pungent bite and a textural pop in the finished pickle.
Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the chopped vegetables, giving the pickle its crisp body.

The step that matters

Draining after the overnight salting. Salt draws water out of the chopped vegetables into the brine. Draining that liquid thoroughly before the vinegar soak keeps the pickle from being diluted and helps the vegetables absorb the vinegar evenly.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, cucumber, horseradish, mustard, celery, turmeric, cinnamon):

  1. Cauliflowerfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, cucumber, horseradish, mustard, celery, turmeric, cinnamon. 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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