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Chow-chow Pickle

A pickled vegetable mixture of green tomatoes, pickling beans, onions, cucumbers, peppers, and cabbage, seasoned with mustard, celery seed, salt, vinegar, oil, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scald the onions separately.

  2. Combine green tomatoes, pickling beans, scalded onions, cucumbers, green peppers, and chopped cabbage in a large pot.

  3. Season with ground mustard, celery seed, and coarse sea salt.

  4. Pour cider vinegar over the mixture to cover it.

Cook and jar

  1. Boil for two hours.

  2. While hot, add sweet oil and white sugar.

  3. Bottle and seal in wide-mouthed 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. 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. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 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 pickle and tart, acidic body once cooked down.
Pickling beans
Add firm, chewy texture that holds its shape through long boiling.
White onions
Contribute savory depth and sweetness that mellows during cooking.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that preserves the mixture and sharpens its flavour.
White sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and tomatoes with sweetness.

The step that matters

Boil for two hours. The long simmer must fully soften the beans and vegetables while the vinegar keeps the mixture acidic enough to be safely preserved. Too short a boil leaves the vegetables raw and the pickle less stable.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, beans, cucumber, 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.

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