Skip to main content
Main

Chow-chow

A pickled vegetable relish made with cucumbers, onions, string beans, cauliflower, celery, sweet peppers, mustard, curry powder, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

  1. Soak cucumbers, onions, string beans, cauliflower, celery, and sweet peppers in strong salt and water overnight.

  2. In the morning, drain the brine and cut the vegetables into shapes that fit into glass jars.

  3. Scald the vegetables in weak salt and water.

  4. Combine mustard and curry powder in vinegar and bring to a boil.

  5. Place the pickles in jars and pour the hot liquid over them.

  6. Do not cover the vegetables while scalding.

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

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

  3. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Beans + cauliflowertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

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

  5. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 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

Vinegar
Provides acidity that helps preserve the vegetables and gives the pickle its sharp tang.
Curry powder
Adds warm, earthy spice aroma and colours the pickling liquid.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour to the pickling liquid.
Cucumbers
Forms the crisp, firm bulk of the pickle.
Onions
Contributes sharpness and aroma that mellow during pickling.
Cauliflower
Adds firm texture that holds up in the brine.

The step that matters

Scalding without a cover. Cooking cauliflower and similar vegetables uncovered lets pungent sulfur compounds escape with the steam, which keeps the flavour milder and the colour lighter.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, beans, cauliflower, celery, pepper, 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.

More chow-chow recipes

Tomato 9Relish 8Mustard 6Virginia 5Pickle 4 See all 29 →

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCauliflower SoupCauliflower Soup28 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCream of Cauliflower SoupCream of Cauliflower Soup22 recipes