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Tomato Chow Chow

A pickled tomato and pepper stew seasoned with salt, vinegar, horseradish, cloves, cinnamon, allspice, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Tomato Chow Chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine sliced tomatoes, peppers, and onions in a bowl.

  2. Stir in the salt and let sit overnight.

  3. The next day, pour off the water.

Make the chow chow

  1. Transfer the vegetables to a kettle and add enough vinegar to cover them.

  2. Stir in the horseradish, cloves, cinnamon, allspice, and sugar.

  3. Cook until the vegetables are soft.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Horseradish + allspicetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together654 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Form the bulk of the pickle and soften into a tender, chunky texture when cooked.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables overnight, firming them and helping preserve them.
Vinegar
Covers the vegetables and provides the sharp acidity that preserves and flavors the pickle.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and adds sweetness to the pickle.
Grated horseradish
Adds pungent heat that mellows during cooking and cuts through the sweetness.

The step that matters

Pour off the water after salting overnight. Salt draws a lot of liquid out of the vegetables. If the liquid is not drained, the pickle will be watery and diluted, and the vinegar flavor will be weaker.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pepper, vinegar, horseradish, clove, cinnamon, allspice):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, vinegar, horseradish, clove, cinnamon, allspice. 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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