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Mother's Tomato Chow Chow

A tomato stew made with green tomatoes, onions, bell peppers, and spices, simmered in vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Mother's Tomato Chow Chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the green tomatoes, onions, and bell peppers finely.

  2. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt, mix well, and let drain overnight.

Cook

  1. In the morning, scald the mixture in weak vinegar and pour off the liquid.

  2. Place the mixture in strong vinegar and cook slowly until tender.

  3. While cooking, add sugar, white mustard, horseradish, celery seed, red peppers, cinnamon, cloves, and allspice.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  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

Green tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the relish and a tart, fresh-vegetable base that softens during slow cooking.
Onions
Add sweetness and body that turns soft and mellow as they cook down in vinegar.
Bell peppers
Contribute mild sweetness and crisp-tender texture that softens with slow cooking.
Sugar
Balances the sharp vinegar with sweetness and helps the relish thicken as it cooks.
White mustard seeds
Add pungent, sharp flavor that mellows during cooking.
Horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent heat that fades somewhat during cooking.

The step that matters

Salting and draining overnight. Salt draws water out of the chopped vegetables by osmosis. Draining removes that liquid, so the relish stays firm and does not become watery when cooked in vinegar.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Broccolifits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, vinegar, sugar, mustard, horseradish, celery. 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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