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Salad

Chow Chow

A pickled relish made with shredded cabbage, peppers, mustard seed, horseradish, salt, vinegar, and sugar.

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. Shred the cabbages as for slaw.

  2. Finely chop the peppers.

Layer and pickle

  1. In a jar, layer cabbage, a little salt, then peppers.

  2. Sprinkle horseradish and mustard seed over each layer.

  3. Repeat layers until all ingredients are used.

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

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

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the relish and gives it a crisp, crunchy texture.
Peppers
Add bulk, mild heat and fresh flavour to the layers.
Horse-radish
Adds sharp, pungent heat that mellows during pickling.
Mustard seed
Contributes a sharp, slightly bitter bite and pungent flavour.
Cold vinegar
Acidifies the jars, preserving the vegetables and giving tang.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with gentle sweetness.

The step that matters

Fill jars with cold vinegar, dissolving the sugar. The vinegar must fully cover the layered vegetables and the sugar must dissolve completely. Vinegar's acidity preserves the relish, and undissolved sugar leaves grainy pockets and uneven sweetness.

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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