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Tomato Chow-chow

A pickled relish of green tomatoes, red peppers, onions, and spices, preserved in vinegar and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Chow-chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice the green tomatoes, red peppers, and onions.

  2. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt in layers and let stand with a weight overnight.

  3. Drain the vegetables and place them in a preserving pan.

Cook and bottle

  1. Add vinegar, brown sugar, horseradish, black pepper, allspice, cloves, mace, ginger, and cinnamon.

  2. Bring to a boil, then simmer slowly for 1 hour, stirring well.

  3. After boiling, add white mustard seed and bottle the mixture.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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, once salted and drained, give it a firm, chunky texture.
Red peppers
Add sweetness and body to the relish as they soften during simmering.
Onions
Contribute savory depth and body as they soften in the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the relish and gives it its sharp tang.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the vinegar's acidity and helps preserve the relish.
White mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent bite and aroma to the finished relish.

The step that matters

Salting the vegetables overnight. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes, peppers, and onions by osmosis. Draining well removes that liquid, so the relish keeps its texture and does not turn watery during simmering.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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