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An Excellent Chow Chow Pickle

A pickled cabbage and celery mixture with onions, peppers, spices, and sweet oil, soaked in vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and mustard 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 ↓

An Excellent Chow Chow Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice the cabbage, celery, and onions finely.

  2. Salt the sliced vegetables well.

  3. Let the mixture sit for 24 hours.

  4. Drain the mixture well.

  5. Cover the drained vegetables with vinegar.

  6. Let them soak for 12 hours.

  7. Drain the vegetables from the vinegar.

Season and pack

  1. Add the chopped red and green peppers, turmeric, mustard seed, mixed mustard, allspice, cloves, black pepper, sweet oil, and brown sugar.

  2. Mix all the ingredients together.

  3. Cover with vinegar.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Turmeric + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Turmeric + allspicetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the pickle and holds a crisp, crunchy texture after salting and soaking.
Onions
Add pungent flavour that mellows during salting and soaking.
Mustard seed
Provides a sharp, pungent bite and characteristic flavour.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Acts as the preserving liquid and adds acidity that gives the pickle its tang.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the vegetables, firming them and concentrating their flavour.

The step that matters

Drain the vegetables well after salting. Salt draws out water; if the vegetables stay wet, the vinegar is diluted and the pickle can turn watery and less crisp.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, celery, vinegar, pepper, turmeric, mustard, 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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