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Chow Chow

A pickled relish made with cabbage, peppers, mustard seed, horseradish, salt, vinegar, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish 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

  1. Cut the cabbages as for slaw.

  2. Chop the peppers very fine.

Layer and pickle

  1. In a jar, layer cabbage, a little salt, then a layer of peppers.

  2. Sprinkle horseradish and mustard seed over each layer.

  3. Repeat layers until all ingredients are used.

  4. Fill the jars with cold vinegar, dissolving 2 ounces of sugar in each quart.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  5. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cabbages
Forms the bulk of the relish and provides crisp texture.
Peppers
Add crunch and mild sweetness, along with their colour and bulk.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent bite and aroma as the relish stands.
Horseradish
Contributes a pungent, sharp heat that mellows during standing.
Cold vinegar
Acts as the pickling liquid that preserves the vegetables and gives acidity.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.

The step that matters

Fill the jars with cold vinegar, dissolving 2 ounces of sugar in each quart.. The vinegar must fully cover the layered vegetables so they are preserved and not exposed to air. Sugar must dissolve completely so it is evenly distributed and balances the acidity.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, mustard, horseradish, vinegar, sugar):

  1. Radishfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, mustard, horseradish, vinegar, sugar. 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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