Skip to main content
Salad

Chow Chow

A pickled relish of tomatoes, beans, onions, peppers, and cabbage seasoned with mustard, cloves, celery seed, allspice, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Tomato and beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Chow Chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice the tomatoes and let them stand overnight in brine that will float an egg.

  2. Squeeze out the brine, then chop the cabbage, onions, and beans.

  3. Chop the tomatoes separately and mix with the spices.

Cook

  1. Pack everything into a porcelain kettle, cover with vinegar, and boil for three hours.

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. Tomato + beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Beans + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Form the bulk of the relish and soften during the long simmer, absorbing the spiced vinegar.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and spices.
White mustard seed
Provides a sharp, pungent bite that mellows during the long boil.
Cabbage
Adds body and a crisp-tender texture after the long cooking.

The step that matters

Brining the tomatoes overnight. Soaking the sliced tomatoes in egg-floating brine draws out excess water and firms the pieces, so the relish does not turn watery or mushy during the three-hour boil.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, beans, onion, pepper, cabbage, mustard, celery):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, beans, onion, pepper, cabbage, mustard, celery. 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

Tomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCabbage DressingCabbage Dressing9 recipesChicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipes