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Chow-chow

A pickled relish made from green tomatoes, peppers, onions, and spices.

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

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the green tomatoes, green peppers, onions, and hot red peppers finely.

  2. Sprinkle 1 pint of salt over the chopped vegetables and let them stand for 12 hours.

Cook and dress

  1. Drain the vegetables and cook them in vinegar for 30 minutes.

  2. Drain again and prepare the dressing by mixing brown sugar, cinnamon, allspice, dry mustard, and grated horseradish with enough vinegar to make it thin.

  3. Pour the dressing over the vegetables, heat until hot, and place in a tight jar.

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. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Allspice + horseradishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together654 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Form the bulk of the relish and, once salted, give it a firm, chopped texture.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the vinegar and the sharp horseradish and mustard.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the relish and thins the dressing to a pourable consistency.
Dry mustard
Adds sharp, pungent heat that deepens the flavour of the dressing.
Grated horseradish
Contributes a sharp, pungent bite that cuts through the sweetness.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, onion, sugar, cinnamon, allspice, mustard, horseradish):

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, onion, sugar, cinnamon, allspice, mustard, 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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