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Chow-chow

A pickled vegetable mixture of cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, cauliflower, and spices in vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chow-chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Boil the cauliflower in salted water until easily pierced with a broom splint.

  2. Boil the onions and tomatoes separately in weak vinegar until tender.

Make the mustard sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix the ground mustard, flour, turmeric, and brown sugar.

  2. Wet the mixture with a little vinegar and stir until smooth.

  3. Add vinegar until you have used 1 gallon, then bring to a boil until thickened.

Combine and can

  1. Add all ingredients to the thickened mixture, heat thoroughly, and stir constantly.

  2. Can while hot.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cucumber + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

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

  3. Cauliflower + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together139 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 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

Ground mustard
Provides the sharp, pungent flavour that defines the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the vinegar sauce as it heats, giving it body.
Vinegar
Supplies acidity that preserves the vegetables and sharpens the sauce.
Turmeric
Adds yellow colour and a mild earthy flavour to the sauce.
Brown sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard with sweetness.
Cauliflowers
Provide the firm, bulky vegetable pieces that hold their shape in the pickle.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour mixture smooth before adding the rest of the vinegar. Flour lumps form if it meets liquid unevenly. Wetting the powder with a little vinegar first and stirring until smooth lets the starch disperse, so the sauce thickens evenly when it boils.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, onion, cauliflower, pepper, horseradish, mustard, flour):

  1. Broccolifits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, onion, cauliflower, pepper, horseradish, mustard, flour. 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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