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Salad

Chow-chow

A pickled vegetable salad made with tomatoes, onions, peppers, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Chow-chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the tomatoes, onions, and peppers the night before, layering salt and vegetables.

  2. Drain the water off the next morning.

Make the chow chow

  1. Add the other ingredients and enough vinegar to cover 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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 hold their shape as the vegetables cook down.
White onions
Add savory sharpness and aroma that mellow during the long simmer.
Green peppers
Contribute crisp texture and fresh, slightly bitter flavor to the relish.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the vinegar's acidity.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the relish its tang.

The step that matters

Draining the salted vegetables. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes, onions, and peppers overnight. Draining that liquid before adding vinegar and spices keeps the relish from becoming watery and helps the vegetables stay firm rather than soft.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pepper, clove, allspice, mustard, sugar, cinnamon):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, clove, allspice, mustard, sugar, 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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Relish 49Pickle 25Pickles 16Tomato 9Cucumber 4Salad 3 See all 120 →

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