Skip to main content
Main

Chow-chow

A pickled green tomato relish with peppers, onions, vinegar, spices, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Horseradish and mustard 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Slice green tomatoes and place them in a jar covered with water.

  2. Add coarse sea salt and let stand for 24 hours.

  3. Pour off the salt water.

  4. Add fresh water.

  5. Let drain for 1-2 hours.

Make the relish

  1. Chop the tomatoes with the peppers and onions.

  2. Put the mixture in a pot with vinegar.

  3. Heat until scalding, stirring continuously.

  4. Drain the mixture.

  5. Transfer to a jar.

  6. Add horseradish, ground cloves and allspice, white mustard seed, and brown sugar. Stir well.

  7. Cover with vinegar.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Horseradish + allspicetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together654 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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, after salting, give it a firm, crisp texture.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the tomatoes so the relish stays firm rather than soggy.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the relish.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharp vinegar and spices.
White mustard seed
Contributes a sharp, pungent flavor that defines the relish.
Onions
Add savory depth and bulk to the chopped vegetable mixture.

The step that matters

Salting and draining the tomatoes. Salt pulls water out of the tomato slices through osmosis. Rinsing and draining well removes excess salt and moisture, so the relish stays crisp and is not overly salty or watery.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, onion, vinegar, horseradish, clove, allspice, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes