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Salad

Chow-chow

A pickled relish of tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, celery, cabbage, cauliflower, horseradish, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and cucumber 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

  1. Slice the onions and tomatoes together, sprinkle salt over them, and let them drain in a colander overnight.

  2. In the morning, chop all the ingredients and mix them together.

Make the relish

  1. Scald the vinegar but do not let it boil.

  2. Add the horseradish to the vinegar after it has cooled slightly.

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. Cauliflower + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

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

  2. Horseradish + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together139 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cauliflower + cabbagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Horseradish + cucumbertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

  5. Horseradish + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 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
Provide the bulk of the relish and a tart, fresh base once drained.
Onions
Add sharp flavor and aroma and keep their texture after salting and draining.
White wine vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the relish its tang.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Cabbage
Adds crunch and bulk to the chopped mixture.
Cucumbers
Add crisp texture and freshness to the chopped mixture.

The step that matters

Scald the vinegar without boiling it. Heating vinegar to just below boiling helps it penetrate and preserve the vegetables, while a rolling boil can drive off aroma and make the vinegar harsher. Adding horseradish after it cools slightly protects its pungent flavor, which fades with prolonged heat.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, horseradish, sugar, cauliflower, celery, cabbage, cucumber):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, horseradish, sugar, cauliflower, celery, cabbage, cucumber. 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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