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Quick Cabbage Chow-chow

A quick pickled cabbage dish with peppers, onions, mustard seeds, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Quick Cabbage Chow-chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the cabbage, green peppers, and onions very fine.

  2. Mix the chopped vegetables with salt and let them stand for 1 hour.

  3. Drain the mixture for 3 hours.

Make the pickling liquid and pour

  1. In a kettle, combine brown sugar, celery seed, black mustard seed, and white mustard seed.

  2. Add vinegar and alum, then bring to a boil.

  3. Pour the hot mixture over the cabbage and cover 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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Mustard + oniontop 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

White cabbage
Forms the bulk of the relish and gives it a crisp, firm texture after salting and draining.
Salt
Draws water out of the chopped vegetables, firming them and concentrating their flavor.
Black mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent heat that mellows as the seeds steep in the hot vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the relish and gives it its tangy flavor.
Brown sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness and a molasses depth.
Alum
Helps the vegetables stay firm and crisp during the hot pickling liquid step.

The step that matters

Draining the salted vegetables. Salt pulls water out of the cabbage, onions, and peppers. Draining for the full time removes that liquid so the relish stays crisp and the pickling vinegar is not diluted.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, pepper, mustard, celery, 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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