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Chow-chow

A pickled vegetable relish made from cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, onions, cabbage, mustard seeds, celery seed, horseradish, turmeric, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish 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 the vegetables

  1. Chop the vegetables finely and salt them well.

  2. Let the mixture stand for 2 to 3 days.

  3. Drain the vegetables thoroughly.

Season and pickle

  1. Mix in the mustard seeds, celery seed, horseradish, turmeric, and sugar.

  2. Pour in enough vinegar to cover the mixture.

  3. Dissolve a small piece of alum in the vinegar to make the vegetables crisp.

  4. If desired, add olive oil and mix well.

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 + horseradishtop 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

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the relish and gives it a firm, crunchy texture.
White mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that mellows during the long pickling.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and adds sweetness.
Vinegar
Acidity preserves the vegetables and gives the relish its tang.
Turmeric
Gives the relish its characteristic yellow color and earthy flavor.

The step that matters

Drain the vegetables thoroughly. Salting draws water out of the vegetables. If excess liquid remains, it dilutes the vinegar and sugar, weakening the preserving brine and leaving the relish watery.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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

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