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English Chow-chow

A pickled vegetable mix of cauliflower, beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, peppers, and spices, preserved in vinegar brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and radish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 212 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

English Chow-chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut the cauliflower into small clusters.

  2. Peel the onions.

  3. Layer the vegetables in a wide-mouthed stone jar.

  4. Sprinkle each layer thickly with coarse sea salt.

  5. Press down the vegetables with a plate or disk of wood.

  6. Weight the jar with a flat iron to keep them submerged in cold water.

  7. Let the jar sit undisturbed for 3 days.

  8. Drain the brine.

  9. Wash the pickles in pure water.

  10. Cover the pickles with fresh water.

  11. Let them soak for 24 hours.

Make the pickle and serve

  1. In a pot, combine the vinegar, black pepper, cloves, turmeric, celery seed, white mustard seed, mace, horseradish, brown sugar, and ground mustard.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Add the pickles, ensuring none are soft or decayed.

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 + radishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together212 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Cauliflower + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

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

  3. Cauliflower + radishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together55 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  4. Beans + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  5. Cauliflower + beanstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cauliflower
Provides firm, crisp pieces that hold their texture through the brine and pickling.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables and inhibits spoilage during the long salt layering.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its sharp flavor.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its characteristic yellow color and a warm, earthy flavor.
Ground mustard
Adds pungent heat and flavor to the vinegar brine.

The step that matters

Washing and soaking after the salt cure. Rinsing and soaking remove excess salt so the pickles are not overly salty. Soaking in fresh water for 24 hours also rehydrates the vegetables somewhat, keeping them crisp rather than limp in the final vinegar.

Swap the radish

The recipe marks radish as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, beans, tomato, cucumber, onion, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Broccolifits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Radishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, beans, tomato, cucumber, onion, pepper, vinegar. 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

Tomato 9Relish 8Mustard 6Virginia 5Pickle 4 See all 29 →

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