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Chow-chow

A pickled vegetable dish with cauliflower, onions, cucumbers, string beans, mustard seeds, cayenne, turmeric, horseradish, vinegar, and mustard.

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

Make the pickling liquid

  1. Combine the black mustard seed, white mustard seed, cayenne pepper, turmeric, and horseradish with the vinegar in a pot and bring to a boil.

Pickle the vegetables

  1. Pour the hot vinegar mixture over the vegetables and let it cool.

  2. Once cooled, mix the mustard with vinegar and add it to the pickles.

  3. Let the mixture sit for a few days before serving.

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. Cauliflower + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

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

  3. Cauliflower + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together514 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cauliflower + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together139 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mustard seed
Provides the sharp, pungent flavor that characterizes the pickling liquid.
Vinegar
Acts as the pickling liquid that preserves and sharpens the vegetables.
Cauliflower
Forms the main body of the pickle mixture, absorbing the tangy brine.
Cucumbers
Provide crisp texture and absorb the vinegar brine as they sit.
Mustard
Adds sharp heat and flavor to the vinegar, sauce-like in the finished pickles.

The step that matters

Letting the pickles sit before serving. The vegetables need several days for the vinegar brine to penetrate and mellow the flavors. Serving too early leaves them harsh and under-seasoned, since the vinegar has not yet soaked fully into the vegetables.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

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