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Chow Chow

A pickled relish made from cucumbers, tomatoes, cabbage, onions, green peppers, and spices, finished with vinegar and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Chow Chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Sprinkle cucumbers or tomatoes with salt and let stand for 6 hours.

  2. Prepare cabbage in the same way, pressing out the water.

  3. Finely chop the onions.

  4. Pour boiling water over the onions. Let the onions stand for a while. Drain the onions.

Mix and pickle

  1. Mix cucumbers, tomatoes, cabbage, onions, and green peppers together.

  2. Add ground mustard, white mustard seed, turmeric, celery seed, mace, red pepper, and ground cinnamon. Mix well.

  3. Boil enough vinegar to cover the mixture and dissolve the sugar in it.

  4. Pour the boiling vinegar over the pickle.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

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

  5. Turmeric + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers or tomatoes
Form the bulk of the pickle and give it its crisp, juicy texture.
Cabbage
Adds bulk and crunch that holds up well after pickling.
Onions
Add pungent flavour that mellows during soaking and pickling.
White mustard seed
Contributes sharp, pungent flavour that mellows in the vinegar.
Sugar
Sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its tang.

The step that matters

Pressing out the water from the salted vegetables. Salting draws water out of cucumbers, tomatoes and cabbage by osmosis. If the water is not removed well, the pickle stays watery and dilutes the vinegar, leaving it soft and less tangy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, cabbage, onion, pepper, mustard, turmeric, celery):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cabbage, onion, pepper, mustard, turmeric, celery. 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 →

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