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Preserve

Chow-chow

A pickled vegetable salad made with green tomatoes, cabbage, cucumber pickles, cauliflower, green peppers, onions, string beans, mustard, salt, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the green tomatoes, cabbage, cucumber pickles, cauliflower, green peppers, white onions, and string beans.

  2. Combine all chopped vegetables in a large pot.

Cook

  1. Add ground mustard, white mustard seed, salt, and vinegar.

  2. Simmer the mixture until the vegetables are sufficiently cooked.

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. Tomato + beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Cauliflower + beanstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Provides the bulk of the relish and its tart, fresh flavor.
Cabbage
Adds body and a crisp-tender texture after simmering.
White mustard seed
Contributes sharp, pungent flavor that deepens as the relish cooks in vinegar.
Ground mustard
Adds mustard flavor and helps thicken and season the mixture.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the relish its tang.

The step that matters

Simmer until the vegetables are sufficiently cooked. Vegetables of different densities soften at different rates. Simmering long enough to tenderize the dense cauliflower and string beans, without overcooking the softer tomatoes, gives an even texture.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, cabbage, cucumber, cauliflower, pepper, beans, mustard. 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.

More chow chow recipes

Relish 49Pickle 25Pickles 16Tomato 9Cucumber 4Salad 3 See all 120 →

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