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Chow-chow

A pickled vegetable relish of green tomatoes, peppers, onions, cabbage, cauliflower, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Chow-chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sprinkle the chopped tomatoes with salt and let them stand overnight.

  2. Chop the green peppers and onions, then add them to the tomatoes.

  3. Add the cloves, allspice, cinnamon, mustard seed, and salt to the mixture.

Cook and pack

  1. Boil the chopped cabbages and cauliflowers in vinegar for 20 minutes.

  2. Combine all ingredients and boil for an additional 5 minutes.

  3. Strain off the vinegar and cover with fresh cold vinegar.

  4. Add the celery seed and mix well.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Mustard + cabbagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 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

Green tomatoes
Form the bulk of the relish and give body once salted and cooked.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that carries the flavour and helps preserve the relish.
Mustard seed
Contributes pungent, sharp flavour that deepens during boiling.
Cabbages
Add crunch and bulk, softening slightly in the hot vinegar.
Cauliflowers
Add crisp texture and bulk, softening slightly in the hot vinegar.

The step that matters

Salting the tomatoes overnight. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes by osmosis. Removing that liquid firms the pieces and keeps the finished relish from becoming watery when boiled in vinegar.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, onion, clove, allspice, cinnamon, mustard, cabbage. 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

Tomato 9Relish 8Mustard 6Virginia 5Pickle 4 See all 29 →

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