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Chow-chow

A pickled vegetable relish made with onions, peppers, cabbage, tomatoes, cucumbers, celery, cauliflower, pickles, mustard seed, spices, horseradish, vinegar, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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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

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice the onions, cabbage, and tomatoes using a slaw cutter.

  2. Cut the peppers and cucumbers into small pieces.

  3. Combine all vegetables with the cauliflower in strong salt water and boil until tender but not too soft.

  4. Drain well through a sieve or colander.

Season and simmer

  1. Return the vegetables to the kettle and add the small onions, celery, and little pickles (which should have soaked in salt water several times).

  2. Add the white mustard seed, celery seed, cinnamon bark, whole allspice, mace, and grated horseradish.

  3. Pour in the cider vinegar.

  4. Mix yellow mustard with turmeric and sweeten with brown sugar to taste.

  5. Combine everything well and bring to a boil.

Pack

  1. Pack into jars, ensuring the pickles are well covered with 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. Cucumber + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

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

  2. Cabbage + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together305 recipes

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

  3. Cauliflower + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

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

  4. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 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

White onions
Add bulk, sweetness and savoury flavour as the base of the relish.
Cabbage
Provides crisp texture and bulk that holds up through pickling.
Cucumbers
Contribute crunch and fresh body to the pickled mixture.
Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the relish its tang.
White mustard seed
Adds pungent flavour and sharpness that mellows during simmering.
Cauliflower
Adds firm texture and bulk to the chopped vegetable mix.

The step that matters

Draining after boiling. Vegetables boiled until just tender and then drained well keep their texture and avoid excess water diluting the vinegar, which would weaken the pickling and make the relish watery.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cabbage, tomato, cucumber, celery, cauliflower, mustard. 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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