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Old Virginia Chow-chow

A pickled relish of tomatoes, cabbage, cucumbers, onions, and spices, preserved in vinegar and sugar.

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 the vegetables

  1. Finely chop tomatoes, cabbage, cucumbers, and onions.

  2. Sprinkle with salt and let sit overnight.

  3. Drain the brine.

  4. Soak the vegetables in a mixture of vinegar and water for one to two days.

  5. Drain again.

Make the pickle

  1. Mix in mustard seed, celery seed, turmeric, and cinnamon.

  2. Boil 2 gallons of vinegar with 4 pounds of sugar.

  3. Pour over the vegetables.

  4. Pour off the liquid.

  5. Heat it up for three mornings.

  6. On the third morning, mix 1 pound of mustard flour with 1 pint of salad oil.

  7. Combine it 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

Mustard flour
Thickens the dressing and adds sharp mustard flavour to the pickle.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and adds sweetness.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its tang.
Salad oil
Adds fat and smoothness to the mustard flour mixture.

The step that matters

Heating the pickle over three mornings. Repeated gentle heating softens the vegetables and helps the flavours blend, while overheating can make the mustard mixture bitter or cause the vegetables to turn mushy.

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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