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Chow Chow

A pickle relish of mixed vegetables in a mustard‑vinegar sauce, left to mature for ten days to two weeks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,776 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Chow Chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Place the prepared vegetables in a jar.

Make the paste

  1. In a bowl, mix the sugar, flour, mustard, red and black pepper, celery seed, mustard seed, ginger, and turmeric with a little vinegar to form a smooth thick paste.

Cook and pour

  1. Heat the vinegar in a pot until it boils.

  2. Pour the paste into the boiling vinegar, stirring continuously until it thickens to the consistency of boiled custard.

  3. While hot, pour the mixture over the vegetables in the jar.

Stand and use

  1. Let the chow chow stand for ten days to two weeks before using.

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. Ginger + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 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

Flour
Thickens the vinegar mixture into a smooth, custard-like sauce.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and adds sweetness.
Vinegar
Acts as the main liquid and provides the sharp, preserving acidity.
Mustard
Adds pungency and flavour, and its seeds and paste give the relish its character.

The step that matters

Stirring the paste into the boiling vinegar. Flour thickens only when it is stirred into hot liquid and kept moving; adding it without constant stirring can leave lumps or a thin, uneven sauce.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, flour, sugar, vinegar, pepper, celery, turmeric. 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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