Name: Chow - Chow
Ingredients: 2 large heads of cabbage; 9 large onions; 8 large green peppers; 150 small cucumbers; 50 green tomatoes; a few small onions; 2 large cauliflowers; 1 quart of string beans

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

Slice the cabbage, onions, green peppers, cucumbers, and green tomatoes into small pieces.
Layer the sliced vegetables in a jar, adding a few small onions and broken pieces of cauliflower.
Cut the string beans into inch pieces and add them to the jar.
Seal the jar and store it in a cool place.

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.

Cucumber + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together584 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Tomato + beanstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,713 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cabbage + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together305 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Cauliflower + beanstop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together290 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Cucumber + tomatotop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,405 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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, pepper, cucumber, tomato, cauliflower, beans):

Lettucefits better
Broccolifits better
Spinachfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, pepper, cucumber, tomato, cauliflower, beans. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.