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Corn Chow-chow

A preserved corn dish made with vinegar, beans, peppers, onions, corn, salt, sugar, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and lima beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 156 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Corn Chow-chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pickling liquid

  1. Mix mustard and vinegar in a pot and bring to a scald.

Cook the vegetables

  1. Cook corn, onions, and beans separately until tender.

Combine and seal

  1. Combine all ingredients in the pot and boil for 5 minutes.

  2. Seal the mixture in jars.

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. Beans + lima beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together156 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Beans + corntop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Lima beans + corntop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together222 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Beans + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

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

  5. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 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

Vinegar
Provides the sour acidity that balances the sugar and keeps the relish tangy.
Mustard
Adds sharp pungent flavor and helps season the vinegar base.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that offsets the acidity of the vinegar.
Corn
Supplies the main bulk and sweet texture of the relish.
Lima beans
Adds firm, starchy body that holds its shape in the mixture.

The step that matters

Boiling the combined mixture. The vegetables were cooked separately, so the final boil is brief. Boiling only long enough to heat through and blend the flavors keeps the vegetables from turning mushy while the vinegar works into them.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, beans, pepper, lima beans, corn, sugar, mustard):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, beans, pepper, lima beans, corn, sugar, 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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