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Chow Chow

A pickled relish made from green tomatoes, cabbage, peppers, onions, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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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 the green tomatoes, cabbage, green peppers, red peppers, and onions very fine.

  2. Mix all the chopped ingredients together.

  3. Layer the mixture in a bag.

  4. Sprinkle salt between layers.

  5. Hang overnight to drain.

  6. In the morning, squeeze the mixture until perfectly dry.

Season and pack

  1. Place the mixture in a dish and cover with cold vinegar.

  2. Let it sit for six hours.

  3. Squeeze again.

  4. Season with mustard seed, celery seed, mace, allspice, and grated horseradish.

  5. Mix well.

Finish with hot vinegar

  1. Boil enough vinegar to cover the mixture.

  2. Add sugar to the boiling vinegar.

  3. Pour the boiling vinegar over the pickle.

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 + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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 pickle and add a tart, firm body.
Cabbage
Adds crisp texture that holds up through salting and pickling.
Sugar
Balances the sharp vinegar with sweetness.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the vegetables and sets the pickle's sharp flavor.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables so they stay crisp and drain dry.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent, sharp flavor that carries through the pickle.

The step that matters

Squeezing the mixture dry. Vegetables hold a lot of water after salting. If they are not squeezed thoroughly dry before covering with vinegar, the pickle will be watery and dilute the vinegar, weakening its preserving effect and texture.

Swap the mace

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

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

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