Skip to main content
Main

English Chow-chow

A pickled vegetable relish of onions, cucumbers, and cauliflower in a mustard and vinegar dressing.

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 ↓

English Chow-chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare small onions, cucumbers, and cauliflower.

  2. Bleach the cucumbers and cauliflower as for yellow pickle.

  3. Scald the onions and cauliflower in salt water, then dry them in the sun.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, mix mustard, sweet oil, coarse sea salt, brown sugar, turmeric, curry powder, and pepper vinegar.

  2. Add 1 gallon of vinegar and boil the mixture until smooth, stirring constantly.

Pickle and seal

  1. Pour the hot dressing over the pickles.

  2. Once cooled, pour a little oil on top and seal the jar.

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 + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together514 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, 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

Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that gives the dressing its characteristic bite.
Sweet oil
Carries the spices and adds richness, coating the vegetables with fat.
Vinegar
Acidifies the dressing, preserving the vegetables and providing tang.
Brown sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard with sweetness.
Turmeric
Contributes golden color and an earthy aroma to the dressing.
Curry powder
Adds warm, aromatic spice that flavors the pickled vegetables.

The step that matters

Drying the scalded vegetables. If the onions and cauliflower stay wet after scalding, they dilute the dressing and can weaken the pickle's keeping quality. Drying them thoroughly in the sun helps the vegetables absorb the hot dressing evenly and stay crisp.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cauliflower, mustard, sugar, turmeric, pepper, 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

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

You might also like

Cauliflower SoupCauliflower Soup28 recipesCream of Cauliflower SoupCream of Cauliflower Soup22 recipesCreamed CauliflowerCreamed Cauliflower17 recipesEscalloped CauliflowerEscalloped Cauliflower9 recipes