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Old Virginia Chow-chow

A pickled relish of tomatoes, cabbage, onions, peppers, celery, horseradish, and spices in vinegar and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 481 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Old Virginia Chow-chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the green tomatoes, cabbage, onions, and peppers very finely.

  2. Cover with coarse sea salt and let sit for 24 hours.

  3. Drain the juice thoroughly.

Cook the chow-chow

  1. Cover with 3 quarts of strong vinegar and add 1 ½ pounds of sugar.

  2. Scald the mixture for 1 hour.

  3. Add 1 ½ pecks of ripe tomatoes, 3 heads of finely chopped celery, and 1 pint of grated horseradish root.

  4. Boil for 15 minutes.

  5. Stir in the ground cloves, white mustard seed, allspice, ground ginger, and ground mustard.

Age

  1. Cover closely and let sit for 1 month before using.

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. Cabbage + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

  4. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  5. Celery + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together835 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 chopped vegetable base, softening during salting and simmering.
Cabbage
Adds body and crunch to the relish after salting and cooking.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and adds sweetness to the relish.
Strong vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the relish and gives it its tang.
Ripe tomatoes
Add moisture and sweet, mellow flavor to the cooked relish.
Horseradish root
Contributes sharp pungency that mellows during the long aging period.

The step that matters

Drain the juice thoroughly. Salting draws out a large amount of liquid from the vegetables. If the juice is not removed, the relish will be watery and diluted, and the vinegar balance will be off.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, onion, pepper, vinegar, sugar, celery, 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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