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Preserve

English Chow-chow

A pickled vegetable mixture of green beans, onions, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, cauliflower, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

English Chow-chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Scald the green beans, onions, peppers, tomatoes, cauliflower, and cucumbers in vinegar, then drain through a colander.

  2. Place the drained vegetables in a jar.

Make the mustard sauce

  1. In a pot, heat fresh vinegar to cover the vegetables and add all the mustard seeds and two-thirds of the ground mustard, then boil for a few minutes.

  2. Mix the remaining ground mustard, turmeric, and oil together, stir the mixture into the pot, and let it boil once.

Combine

  1. Pour over the vegetables in the jar.

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 + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 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 beans
Provide the main crisp vegetable body that holds up to the pickling liquid.
Cucumbers
Add firm, crunchy texture that stays crisp after scalding and pickling.
White mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent flavor as the seeds soften in the hot vinegar.
Black mustard seed
Adds a sharper, more pungent bite to the sauce.
Yellow ground mustard
Thickens the sauce and adds mustard flavor and body.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the vegetables and sharpens the flavor.

The step that matters

Heating the mustard sauce with the ground mustard. Ground mustard can clump or scorch if not fully mixed in before boiling, and boiling drives off some of the sharp pungency. Mixing the ground mustard with oil first helps it blend smoothly into the hot vinegar.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against green beans, tomato, cucumber, pepper, cauliflower, mustard, 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.

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