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Salad

Chow-chow

A pickled relish of cucumbers, onions, string beans, tomatoes, cauliflower, celery, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and cauliflower match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 584 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Chow-chow

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the vegetables

  1. Combine cucumbers, onions, string beans, green tomatoes, cauliflower, and celery in a stone jar.

  2. Mix with salt and let sit for 24 hours.

Make the relish

  1. Scald in the brine, then drain off excess liquid.

  2. In a preserving kettle, add turmeric, red peppers, mustard seed, celery seed, cloves, allspice, sugar, and mustard mixture.

  3. Add enough vinegar to cover the mixture well.

  4. Simmer until tender, then transfer to bottles or glass jars.

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. Cucumber + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Beans + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  4. Beans + cauliflowertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Cucumber + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 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

Cucumbers
Provide crisp texture that holds up through pickling.
Onions
Add savory bulk and a mild sharpness that mellows during simmering.
Green tomatoes
Add tartness and body that breaks down into the relish.
Cauliflower
Adds firm pieces that absorb the spiced vinegar.
Mustard seed
Contributes pungent flavor that deepens as it cooks in vinegar.
Sugar
Balances the sharp acidity of the vinegar and tomatoes.

The step that matters

Salting and resting the vegetables for 24 hours. Salt draws water out of the vegetables by osmosis, so they lose liquid and stay crisp. Draining off that excess liquid before simmering keeps the relish from becoming watery and diluted.

Swap the onion

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

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

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