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Chow Chow

A pickled vegetable relish made with green tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, onions, vinegar, sugar, spices, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 481 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chow Chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the green tomatoes, green peppers, cabbage, and onions in the evening.

  2. Mix the chopped vegetables with ⅓ pint of coarse sea salt and let sit overnight.

  3. In the morning, drain the vegetables well and place them in a large kettle.

Cook and jar

  1. Cover the vegetables with 2 cups of cider vinegar.

  2. Add 1½ pounds of brown sugar, ⅓ cup of grated horseradish, ½ tablespoon of mustard seed, ½ tablespoon of ground mustard, ⅓ tablespoon of ground cloves, ⅓ tablespoon of black pepper, and 1 tablespoon of celery seed.

  3. Boil the mixture for 45 minutes.

  4. Pour the chow chow into glass jars while hot.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  3. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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
Form the bulk of the relish, with their firm texture holding up through the long cooking.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the chopped vegetables, firming them and concentrating their flavor before cooking.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the relish its tangy flavor and helps preserve it.
Brown sugar
Provides sweetness that balances the vinegar and sharpness of the vegetables.
Onions
Add savory depth and aroma as they soften during boiling.
Grated horseradish
Contributes a sharp, pungent heat that mellows during cooking.

The step that matters

Draining the salted vegetables well. Salt draws out a lot of water from the chopped vegetables. If they are not drained thoroughly, the extra liquid dilutes the vinegar and sugar mixture, weakening the flavor and making the relish watery.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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

More chow chow recipes

Relish 49Pickle 25Pickles 16Tomato 9Cucumber 4Salad 3 See all 120 →

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