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Chow-chow

A pickled vegetable relish made with cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, cauliflower, and spices, preserved in vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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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 ↓

Chow-chow

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the vegetables

  1. Place cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, and cauliflower in a bowl and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

  2. Let the vegetables sit for 24 hours.

  3. Rinse the vegetables with cold water and drain well.

Make the pickle

  1. Add grated horseradish and chopped celery to the vegetables.

  2. In a pot, combine cold vinegar, turmeric, cloves, cinnamon, black pepper, sugar, white mustard seed, and ground mustard.

  3. Boil the mixture for 15 minutes.

  4. Pour the hot mixture over the vegetables.

Bottle and rest

  1. Seal the mixture in clean chow-chow bottles.

  2. Let it sit for a few weeks before using.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Horseradish + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together437 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the crisp, watery vegetable base that absorbs the pickling liquid.
Cauliflower
Adds firm texture that holds up through salting and soaking in vinegar.
White mustard seed
Contributes sharp pungency that mellows as the pickle rests.
Sugar
Balances the sharp acidity of the vinegar with sweetness.
Cold vinegar
Acidity preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its tang.

The step that matters

Salting the vegetables for 24 hours. Salt draws water out of the vegetables through osmosis. Rinsing and draining well afterward removes excess salt and moisture, so the vegetables stay crisp and do not make the final pickle too salty or watery.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, tomato, cauliflower, horseradish, celery, vinegar, turmeric):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, tomato, cauliflower, horseradish, celery, vinegar, turmeric. 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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