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An Excellent Chow Chow Pickle

A pickled vegetable mixture of cabbage, celery, onions, peppers, spices, and sweet oil soaked in vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 ↓

An Excellent Chow Chow Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice the cabbage, celery, and onions finely and salt them well.

  2. Let the mixture sit for 24 hours, then drain it thoroughly.

  3. Cover the drained vegetables with vinegar and let them sit for 12 hours.

  4. Drain the vegetables from the vinegar again.

Season and pickle

  1. Add the chopped red and green peppers, turmeric, mustard seeds, mixed mustard, allspice, cloves, black pepper, sweet oil, and brown sugar.

  2. Mix all the ingredients together and cover 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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Turmeric + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Turmeric + allspicetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the pickle and gives it a crisp, firm texture.
Onions
Add pungency and sweetness that mellow during the long salting and soaking.
Mustard seeds
Provide sharp, pungent flavour that develops in the vinegar.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its characteristic golden colour and earthy aroma.

The step that matters

Draining after salting and after vinegar soaking. Thorough draining removes excess liquid and salt from the vegetables. Leftover water would dilute the vinegar and make the pickle soggy and less well preserved.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, celery, pepper, turmeric, mustard, allspice, clove):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Cauliflowerfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, celery, pepper, turmeric, mustard, 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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