Skip to main content
Salad

Chow-chow

A pickled vegetable relish made with green tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, green peppers, cabbage, horseradish, mustard, salt, celery, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Horseradish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chow-chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the green tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, green peppers, and cabbage.

  2. Grate the horseradish.

Cook

  1. Combine all ingredients in a large pot.

  2. Cover with good vinegar.

  3. Boil slowly for two hours, stirring often.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

  4. Cabbage + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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 tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the chow-chow and a tart, firm body that holds up to long simmering.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and aroma that deepens during the long cooking.
Cabbage
Adds crisp-tender texture and bulk to the chopped vegetable mixture.
Horseradish
Contributes sharp, pungent heat that mellows with cooking.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the relish its tang.

The step that matters

Boil slowly for two hours, stirring often. Long, gentle simmering softens the vegetables and blends the vinegar and flavors, while frequent stirring keeps the mixture from scorching on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, cucumber, pepper, cabbage, horseradish, mustard, celery):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, cucumber, pepper, cabbage, horseradish, mustard, celery. 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 →

You might also like

Tomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCabbage DressingCabbage Dressing9 recipesChicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipes