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Chow-chow

A pickled vegetable relish made with pickles, cauliflower, beans, onions, peppers, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 687 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Chow-chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Finely chop the pickles, cauliflower, beans, and peppers, leaving the onions whole.

  2. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and let sit overnight.

  3. Drain the mixture the next morning and place it in a large jar.

Make the pickling liquid

  1. In a pot, mix the vinegar with the ground mustard (wet the mustard with cold water first).

  2. Place cloves, whole peppercorns, and mustard seeds in a bag and add to the vinegar.

  3. Boil the vinegar and spices, then pour it over the pickled vegetables while hot.

  4. Stir in the curry powder and let cool.

Seal and store

  1. Once cool, cover with a cloth containing mustard seeds and seal the jar.

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

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

  2. Cauliflower + beanstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

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

  3. Beans + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  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

Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables, softening them and concentrating their flavour before pickling.
1 gallon best pickling vinegar
Acid that preserves the vegetables and gives the relish its sharp, tangy character.
1 pound ground mustard
Adds pungency and heat to the pickling liquid, flavouring the vinegar.
Mustard seeds
Contribute a sharp, slightly bitter aroma and pungent flavour to the pickling liquid.
1 tablespoon curry powder
Adds warm, aromatic spice notes that deepen the relish's flavour.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling vinegar over the vegetables while hot. The hot liquid helps penetrate and soften the vegetables and carries the spices into them. Pouring it too cool, or letting the vegetables stay wet and unsealed, weakens the pickling and leaves the relish less stable.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, beans, pepper, vinegar, mustard, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, beans, pepper, vinegar, mustard, clove. 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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