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Marie's Favorite Chow-chow

A pickled relish of green tomatoes, peppers, onions, horseradish, salt, and spiced vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,784 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Marie's Favorite Chow-chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the green tomatoes, peppers, and onions.

  2. Scald the chopped vegetables in salted water.

  3. Drain the vegetables in a sieve.

Pack and cover

  1. Pack the drained vegetables into jars.

  2. Cover the vegetables with spiced 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. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + horseradishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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 pickle and a firm, tart base once scalded.
Onions
Add savory sharpness and aroma that mellow during pickling.
Peppers
Contribute crisp texture and mild, fresh flavor to the mix.
Horseradish
Adds a pungent, sharp heat that carries through the vinegar.

The step that matters

Draining the scalded vegetables well. Excess water left in the vegetables dilutes the spiced vinegar and can make the pickle watery and less stable in the jar. Draining thoroughly keeps the vinegar at full strength and the texture firmer.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Cabbagefits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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