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Chow-Chow, I

A pickled vegetable relish made with cucumbers, onions, cauliflower, green peppers, green tomatoes, vinegar, mustard, turmeric, flour, sugar, celery seed, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and cauliflower match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 584 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Chow-Chow, I

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut the cucumbers, onions, cauliflowers, green peppers, and green tomatoes into small pieces.

  2. Sprinkle salt over the vegetables to create a weak brine. Cover with water. Let stand overnight.

  3. Heat the mixture until scalding but do not boil. Drain in a colander.

Make the dressing

  1. Boil 3 quarts of vinegar.

  2. Mix the ground mustard, turmeric, and flour into a smooth paste. Stir the paste into the boiling vinegar.

  3. Add the sugar and celery seed. Mix well.

Bottle and seal

  1. Place the pickles into bottles. Pour the dressing over them. Seal with corks.

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. Cucumber + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

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

  2. Cauliflower + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together514 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 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

Cucumbers
Form the crisp, bulky body of the pickle mix.
Green tomatoes
Add firm texture and tartness that suits the pickling brine.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that preserves and flavors the pickles.
Flour
Thickens the mustard paste so the dressing clings to the vegetables.
Ground mustard
Adds pungent flavor to the dressing.
Sugar
Balances the sharp acidity with sweetness.

The step that matters

Heat the vegetables until scalding but not boiling. Boiling would soften the cut vegetables into mush, while scalding draws out excess water and keeps them firm enough to hold their crunch in the dressing.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, cauliflower, pepper, tomato, vinegar, mustard, turmeric):

  1. Broccolifits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cauliflower, pepper, tomato, vinegar, mustard, turmeric. 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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