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Chow-chow

A pickled vegetable mixture of cabbage, celery, tomatoes, onions, horseradish, peppers, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 ↓

Chow-chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the cabbage, celery, green tomatoes, onions, horseradish, green peppers, and red peppers together.

  2. Stir in the coarse sea salt and let the mixture stand for 1 hour.

  3. Press out the water from the mixture.

Cook and seal

  1. Mix in the celery seed, mustard seed, cloves, allspice, mace, and black pepper.

  2. Put the mixture on the stove with the vinegar and brown sugar.

  3. Let it simmer for 1 hour.

  4. Seal in glass jars.

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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Celery + tomatotop 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

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the relish, giving it body and a crisp-tender texture after cooking.
Green tomatoes
Add tartness and body, and their pectin helps the relish thicken as it cooks.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the relish its tang and helps preserve it.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and depth, balancing the sharpness of the vinegar and tomatoes.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables, firming them and leaving them less watery.

The step that matters

Press out the water from the mixture. Salted vegetables release a lot of liquid. Removing it before cooking keeps the relish from becoming watery and lets it thicken properly in the vinegar and sugar syrup.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, celery, onion, horseradish, pepper, mustard, clove. 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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