Skip to main content
Salad

Chow-chow

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 cucumbers in brine for one day.

  2. Scald the onions and cauliflower in salt water.

Make the dressing and pour

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar, sugar, flour, mustard, and cinnamon.

  2. Scald the mixture and pour it over the pickles.

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

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

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Onion + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

  5. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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
Brining firms the cucumbers and seasons them so they stay crisp in the pickle.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that makes the pickle tangy and helps preserve it.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharp acidity of the vinegar.
Flour
Thickens the vinegar mixture so the dressing clings to the vegetables.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor to the dressing.

The step that matters

Scalding the flour and vinegar mixture. Flour can clump when it meets hot liquid. Stir the flour, sugar, mustard and spices into the vinegar until smooth before heating, so the starch thickens the dressing evenly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cauliflower, tomato, pepper, vinegar, sugar, flour. 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.

More chow-chow recipes

Tomato 9Relish 8Mustard 6Virginia 5Pickle 4 See all 29 →

You might also like

Tomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesChicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes