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Chow Chow

A pickled vegetable relish made with green tomatoes, beans, peppers, carrots, lima beans, mustard seeds, sugar, vinegar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Green beans and lima beans share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Chow Chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice the green tomatoes and sprinkle with coarse sea salt. Let the tomatoes sit while preparing the other vegetables.

  2. Boil the lima beans, carrots, and green beans in water for 30 minutes, then drain.

Make the relish

  1. Mix the drained vegetables with the salted tomatoes.

  2. Cover the mixture with cider vinegar and boil until tender.

  3. Stir in the granulated sugar while hot.

Bottle

  1. Bottle and seal the mixture immediately.

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. Green beans + lima beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Tomato + green beanstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together113 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 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
Provide the bulk of the relish and, salted, release moisture that helps the mixture drain and firm.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the relish its tangy flavour and helps preserve it.
Granulated sugar
Balances the sharp vinegar with sweetness.
Lima beans
Add body and texture as the main cooked vegetable.
Green beans
Add body and texture as a main cooked vegetable.
Mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that mellows during cooking.

The step that matters

Boil until tender. Boiling the vinegar-covered mixture long enough softens the vegetables so they are tender but not mushy. Under-cooking leaves them crunchy and raw-tasting, while over-cooking turns them soft and dull. Hot vinegar also helps the relish preserve well once sealed.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, green beans, pepper, lima beans, mustard, sugar, cider):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, green beans, pepper, lima beans, mustard, sugar, cider. 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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