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Chow Chow

A pickled vegetable relish made with cucumbers, onions, peppers, cauliflower, mustard flour, cayenne, turmeric, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Soak cucumbers, onions, peppers, and cauliflower in strong brine for 2 days.

  2. Drain and rinse vegetables with lukewarm water.

  3. Parboil onions for 5 minutes, then cool in cold water and drain.

Make the relish

  1. In a copper basin, combine cucumbers, onions, peppers, and cauliflower.

  2. Dilute mustard flour in 1 pint of lukewarm water, then add cayenne and turmeric.

  3. Pour enough vinegar to cover the vegetables and simmer until tender.

  4. If desired, add a little sugar while cooking.

Bottle

  1. Remove from heat, cool, and transfer to wide‑mouthed bottles, sealing tightly.

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

Cucumbers
Provide the main crisp-tender body of the relish after brining and simmering.
Mustard flour
Thickens the sauce and gives the characteristic sharp mustard flavour.
Turmeric
Adds the yellow colour and a mild, earthy aroma.
Cider or wine vinegar
Acidity that preserves the vegetables and sharpens the flavour.
Onions
Add sweetness and texture that softens during simmering.

The step that matters

Simmer until tender. Simmering in vinegar softens the vegetables while the acid preserves them; stopping too early leaves them firm, and overcooking makes them mushy and dulls the sauce.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pepper, cauliflower, mustard, flour, turmeric, cider. 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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