Skip to main content
Main

Chow-Chow

A pickled relish of onions, tomatoes, gherkins, peppers, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 22 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Chow-Chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop onions, green tomatoes, and gherkins into fine slices.

  2. Place the sliced vegetables in a pan and sprinkle with salt.

  3. Let stand for 12 hours.

Season and cook

  1. Add mace, mustard-seed, celery-seed, turmeric, whole cloves, brown sugar, finely ground mustard, and grated horseradish to the vegetables.

  2. Pour 8 pints of strong vinegar over the mixture.

  3. Boil for 30 minutes.

Jar

  1. Transfer the Chow-Chow into jars and seal 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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  5. Celery + turmerictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Form the bulk of the relish and hold their shape as pieces of vegetable.
Onions
Add savory bulk and a sharp, sweet flavor that mellows during cooking.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the relish and gives it its tangy character.
Mustard-seed
Contributes pungent, sharp flavor when cooked in the vinegar mixture.
Gherkins
Add crunch and a tangy, pickled flavor to the relish.

The step that matters

Salting and standing the sliced vegetables for 12 hours. Salt draws water out of the vegetables by osmosis, so they release liquid and firm up. Skipping or shortening this rest leaves the relish wetter and softer after cooking.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, tomato, cucumber, pepper, mustard, celery, 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.

More chow chow recipes

Relish 49Pickle 25Pickles 16Tomato 9Cucumber 4Salad 3 See all 120 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesRed CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipes