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Chow-chow

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and radish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 212 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Chow-chow

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fill a two-gallon jar with small pieces of cauliflower, cucumbers, onions, radish pods, peppers, nasturtium seeds, green tomatoes, and bits of horseradish.

  2. Cover the mixture with a strong brine and let it stand for three days.

  3. Pour off the brine and pour on boiling vinegar.

  4. Leave the mixture in the vinegar for one week.

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 + radishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together212 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Cauliflower + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

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

  3. Radish + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together38 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cauliflower + radishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together55 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  5. Cauliflower + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together139 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, cucumber, onion, radish, pepper, horseradish, vinegar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, cucumber, onion, radish, pepper, horseradish, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

More chow chow recipes

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

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