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Chow Chow

A pickled relish of green tomatoes, onions, and peppers seasoned with allspice, cloves, black pepper, horseradish, mustard seed, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chow Chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the green tomatoes, onions, and green peppers finely.

  2. Mix with coarse sea salt and let stand overnight.

  3. Squeeze through a cloth to remove all moisture.

Season and pack

  1. Add allspice, cloves, black pepper, horseradish, and white mustard seed; mix well.

  2. Pack into a jar and cover with good 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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Allspice + horseradishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together654 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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, supplying texture and a tart, fresh body.
Onions
Add savory depth and aromatic sharpness as they soften in the brine and vinegar.
White mustard seed
Provides pungent heat and a sharp, mustardy bite that mellows during storage.
Horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent heat that lingers on the palate.
Good vinegar
Acts as the preserving liquid, adding acidity that keeps the relish tangy and stable.

The step that matters

Squeezing out the moisture. Salting draws water out of the chopped vegetables. Removing the remaining liquid before packing keeps the chow chow crisp-textured and stops it from becoming watery or diluting the vinegar, which helps it keep well in the jar.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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