Skip to main content
Drink

Chow Chow Fickle

A pickled relish of cabbage, peppers, onions, tomatoes, mustard, spices, brown sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chow Chow Fickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the cabbage, green peppers, white onions, and green tomatoes finely.

  2. Boil the chopped vegetables in strong salt water.

  3. Drain the vegetables until dry.

Make the pickle

  1. Add the mustard seed, celery seed, grated horseradish, allspice, cloves, mustard flour, turmeric, and brown sugar.

  2. Mix all ingredients thoroughly and cover with plenty of vinegar.

  3. Cook for a few minutes.

  4. Let cool completely before sealing.

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 + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cabbage + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Cabbage + mustardtop 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

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the pickle and gives it a crisp, chunky texture.
Green tomatoes
Add tartness and body, contributing pectin that helps the pickle hold together.
White mustard seed
Provides sharp pungency that mellows during cooking and steeping in vinegar.
Brown sugar
Balances the vinegar's acidity with sweetness and adds depth of flavour.
Vinegar
Preserves the pickle and provides the sharp acidity that defines its taste.
Turmeric
Contributes a golden colour and earthy, mildly bitter aroma.

The step that matters

Drain the vegetables until dry. Excess water dilutes the vinegar and can make the pickle watery and less safe to store, so the vegetables should be drained thoroughly before the spices and vinegar are added.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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

You might also like

Raspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesSugar VinegarSugar Vinegar20 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipes