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Sauce

Chow-chow

Chow-Chow is a pickled vegetable relish made with cucumbers, onions, peppers, cauliflowers, flour, mustard, turmeric, brown sugar, vinegar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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. Soak the cucumbers, onions, peppers, and cauliflowers overnight in salt water.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the flour, mustard, and turmeric with enough cold vinegar to make a smooth paste.

  2. Add the brown sugar and remaining vinegar to the mixture and boil until it thickens, stirring constantly.

Combine and cook

  1. Add the soaked vegetables and cook until heated through.

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 + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together514 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Flour
Thickens the sauce so it becomes smooth and clings to the vegetables.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that balances the sweetness of the sugar.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its characteristic yellow color and earthy aroma.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and depth that offsets the acidity of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its tang.

The step that matters

Boil the sauce until it thickens. The flour paste needs to reach a full boil while stirred constantly, because flour starch only thickens fully once heated and will scorch or stay lumpy if left still.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pepper, cauliflower, flour, mustard, turmeric, sugar. 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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Relish 49Pickle 25Pickles 16Tomato 9Cucumber 4Salad 3 See all 120 →

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