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Green Tomato Chow-chow

A pickled tomato chow-chow made with tomatoes, onions, cabbage, peppers, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Green Tomato Chow-chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the tomatoes, cabbage, and peppers.

  2. Cover the chopped vegetables with 1 large teacup of coarse sea salt and let sit overnight.

Pickle and serve

  1. Boil the cider vinegar with the spices together.

  2. Pour the hot vinegar and spice mixture over the pickled vegetables.

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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Celery + turmerictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the relish and release moisture that the salt draws out.
Cabbage
Adds crisp texture that holds up after salting and pickling.
Cider vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that preserves and flavors the relish.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Celery seed
Contributes a warm, aromatic flavor to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Salting the chopped vegetables overnight. Salt draws water out of the vegetables through osmosis. Too little salt or too short a rest leaves them watery and soft, which dilutes the hot vinegar and weakens the crisp texture.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, cabbage, pepper, celery, mustard, turmeric, 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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