Skip to main content
Main

Mother's Tomato Chow Chow

A pickled tomato relish with onions, peppers, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 the vegetables

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

  2. Mix with coarse sea salt and let drain overnight.

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

Cook

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

  2. 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 chow chow and soften into a tender, chunky texture when cooked.
Onions
Add savory depth and body as they soften during the slow cook.
Bell peppers
Contribute bulk, mild sweetness, and tender texture to the relish.
Sugar
Sweetens the relish and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Strong vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the relish and gives it its tangy flavor.
White mustard seeds
Add a sharp, pungent flavor that mellows during cooking.

The step that matters

Scalding in weak vinegar, then pouring off the liquid. Scalding draws out excess moisture and softens the vegetables, while pouring off the liquid removes water that would otherwise dilute the vinegar and weaken the final texture and preservation.

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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipes