Skip to main content
Sauce

Chow-chow

A pickled relish of onions, cucumbers, cauliflower, green tomatoes, and peppers in a vinegar and mustard sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cucumber and cauliflower match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 584 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Chow-chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the onions, cucumbers, cauliflower (or cabbage), green tomatoes, and red peppers, but not too fine.

  2. Mix the chopped vegetables with salt.

  3. Scald them in 3 pints of vinegar and 3 pints of water.

  4. Once well scalded, drain the vegetables from the vinegar.

Make the dressing and combine

  1. In a separate bowl, mix 6 pints of vinegar, 2½ cups of brown sugar, ¾ pound of ground mustard, 1 ounce of turmeric, ½ pint of olive oil, and ¾ cup of flour.

  2. Combine the mustard, flour, oil, and turmeric with 1 pint of cold vinegar.

  3. Stir this mixture into the boiling vinegar while adding the sugar and spices.

  4. Add celery or celery seed for extra flavor if desired.

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 + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Cucumber + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  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

Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that defines the pickle and helps preserve the vegetables.
Flour
Thickens the vinegar mixture into a smooth, spoonable sauce when heated.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharp acidity of the vinegar.
Ground mustard
Contributes the pungent, sharp flavour characteristic of mustard pickles.
Turmeric
Gives the chow chow its yellow colour and a mildly bitter, earthy aroma.
Olive oil
Adds fat that gives the sauce a smoother, richer mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stir the flour mixture into the boiling vinegar. Flour clumps if added dry or to hot liquid unmixed. Blending it first with cold vinegar makes a smooth slurry, which then thickens evenly when stirred into the boiling liquid.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, cauliflower, tomato, pepper, vinegar, sugar, mustard):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cauliflower, tomato, pepper, vinegar, sugar, mustard. 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

Mixed MustardMixed Mustard9 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes