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Salad

Chow Chow

A pickled relish of cabbage, peppers, mustard seed, horseradish, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and radish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 297 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Chow Chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cabbages as for slaw.

  2. Chop the peppers very fine.

Layer and cover

  1. In a jar, layer cabbage, a little salt, then peppers, horse-radish, and mustard seed.

  2. Repeat layers until all ingredients are used.

  3. Fill jars with cold vinegar, dissolving 2 ounces of sugar in each quart.

Serve

  1. Serve with hot or cold meat.

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 + radishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together297 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Cabbage + radishtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together106 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Horse + radishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together529 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 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

Cabbages
Forms the bulk of the relish and provides a crisp, crunchy texture.
Peppers
Add pungent, savoury flavour and body to the layered mixture.
Mustard seed
Contributes a sharp, pungent bite and aroma to the relish.
Horse-radish
Adds sharp heat and a pungent aroma that carries through the vinegar.
Sugar
Sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Cold vinegar
Acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the relish its tang.

The step that matters

Layering with salt. Salt drawn into the cabbage and peppers softens and seasons the vegetables evenly, so the layers should be built evenly and fully covered by the vinegar to keep the relish stable.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, mustard, horse, radish, vinegar, sugar):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Cucumberfits about as well
  3. Broccolifits about as well
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, mustard, horse, radish, vinegar, sugar. 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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