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Salad

Chow-chow

A pickled vegetable relish made from cabbage, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,279 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Chow-chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Remove defective and green outer leaves from the cabbage and shave enough to fill a 4-quart measure.

  2. Measure equal quantities of green tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers, and slice them thin after wiping with a wet cloth.

  3. Place the vegetables in earthen or wooden vessels and sprinkle with salt; let them stand overnight.

Cook and store

  1. The next day, drain the vegetables and put them in a preserving kettle with red peppers and spices.

  2. Add enough vinegar to cover the mixture and boil gently for 30 minutes.

  3. Cool the mixture and store it in earthen or glass jars with tight covers.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

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

  4. Turmeric + clovetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,876 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 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

Green tomatoes
Add tartness and body to the relish as they cook down in vinegar.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables, firming them and concentrating their flavor before cooking.
Vinegar
Acts as the cooking liquid and preservative, giving the relish its sharp, tangy flavor.
Mustard seed
Contributes a pungent, slightly bitter spice flavor that stands up to the vinegar.
Powdered turmeric
Gives the relish its characteristic yellow color and a warm, earthy aroma.

The step that matters

Salting overnight. Salt draws out water from the vegetables through osmosis. Rinsing and draining properly matters, because leftover salt makes the relish overly salty, and under-salting leaves the vegetables watery and soft after boiling.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, tomato, cucumber, pepper, mustard, turmeric, clove. 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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