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A pickled vegetable mixture of cucumbers, onions, cauliflower, and tomatoes in a vinegar and mustard brine.

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

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Soak the green cucumbers in brine for 3 days.

  2. Scald the small cucumbers, onions, cauliflower, and green tomatoes in salt water.

Make the sauce and seal

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar, sugar, flour, and mustard, then scald the mixture.

  2. Pour the scalded mixture over the vegetables and seal the 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. Cucumber + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 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

Vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the pickle.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the vegetables.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Scalding the vinegar, sugar, flour and mustard mixture. Flour thickens only when its starch is heated in liquid. If the mixture does not get hot enough, the sauce stays thin and can taste floury. Heating it fully before pouring also helps it coat the vegetables evenly.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, onion, cauliflower, vinegar, sugar, flour, mustard):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, onion, cauliflower, vinegar, sugar, flour, mustard. 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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