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Salad

Chow-chow

A pickled cucumber relish made with cucumbers, celery, onions, beans, cauliflower, peppers, mustard, turmeric, vinegar, sugar, flour, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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. Combine cucumbers, celery, small cucumbers, onions, beans, cauliflower, and green peppers in a large bowl.

  2. Add weak salt and water, and let sit for 24 hours.

  3. Scald the mixture in the same water.

Make the paste

  1. In a separate pot, mix mustard, turmeric, cider vinegar, sugar, flour, celery seed, and white mustard seed.

  2. Cook the mixture until thick.

Combine and serve

  1. Drain the vegetables well and pour the hot paste over them.

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 + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together514 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Beans + cauliflowertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the main crisp vegetable body of the relish.
Cider vinegar
Supplies acidity that preserves the relish and gives it its tang.
Sugar
Balances the sharp acidity with sweetness.
Flour
Thickens the paste so it coats the vegetables.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavor and pungency to the paste.
Turmeric
Gives the relish its yellow color and earthy flavor.

The step that matters

Cook the paste until thick. Flour thickens only as it heats and needs to cook long enough to lose its raw taste and set. Undercooked flour leaves the paste thin and floury, so it fails to coat the vegetables.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, celery, beans, cauliflower, pepper, mustard, turmeric):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, celery, beans, cauliflower, pepper, mustard, turmeric. 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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