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Chow Chow

A pickled vegetable relish made with green tomatoes, peppers, onions, cabbage, cauliflower, salt, mustard, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and cauliflower match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 305 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chow Chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the green tomatoes, green peppers, onions, cabbage, and cauliflower finely.

  2. Mix all the chopped vegetables together.

  3. Pack the mixture in a jar or large vessel.

  4. Layer the vegetables with 1/2 pint of salt for each peck of vegetables.

  5. Let it stand overnight.

  6. Squeeze out the brine from the vegetables.

Pickle and seal

  1. Add the white mustard seed.

  2. Add the ground mustard, mixing well.

  3. Pack the mixture back into the jar.

  4. Boil enough vinegar to cover the chow chow.

  5. Pour the boiled vinegar over the mixture.

  6. Seal the jar tightly.

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. Cabbage + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together305 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  5. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 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

Green tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the relish and a tart, fresh flavour once pickled.
Cabbage
Adds crisp texture that holds up through salting and pickling.
Cauliflower
Adds firm pieces that keep their bite in the pickling liquid.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables, firming them and concentrating flavour before pickling.
Vinegar
Acidifies the mixture, preserving it and giving it its sharp tang.
Ground mustard
Contributes pungent, sharp mustard flavour that spreads through the relish.

The step that matters

Squeeze out the brine from the vegetables. Salt draws water out of the vegetables; removing the brine before adding vinegar keeps the relish crisp and stops it from becoming watery and diluted in the jar.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, onion, cabbage, cauliflower, mustard, vinegar):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, onion, cabbage, cauliflower, mustard, vinegar. 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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