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Salad

Chow Chow

A preserved tomato and pepper relish made with salt, spices, sugar, horseradish, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Chow Chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the tomatoes, peppers, and onions.

  2. Add salt and soak overnight.

  3. Drain in the morning.

Cook

  1. Stir in cloves, allspice, cinnamon, sugar, and horseradish.

  2. Cover with vinegar and boil until tender.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the bulk and liquid that form the body of the relish.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables during the overnight soak, firming them and reducing excess liquid.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the vinegar and spices.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the relish its tang and helps preserve it.
Horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent heat that gives the relish its bite.

The step that matters

Cover with vinegar and boil until tender.. The vegetables must cook long enough to soften fully, but boiling too hard or too long can break them down into mush. Watching for tenderness rather than a set time helps keep the texture right.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, clove, allspice, cinnamon, sugar, 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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