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Chow-chow

A pickled tomato relish made with tomatoes, onions, sugar, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Chow-chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Place the sliced tomatoes in a jar with salt and let them sit overnight.

  2. Pour off the juice and chop the tomatoes.

Make the relish

  1. Add chopped onions, sugar, cloves, black pepper, ground mustard, and mustard seed to the tomatoes.

  2. Cook the mixture in vinegar for two hours.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Clove + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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, after salting, a firm, chopped texture.
Coarse sea salt
Draws juice out of the tomatoes, firming them and concentrating the flavor before cooking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the relish and gives it its tangy flavor.
Mustard seed
Contributes a sharp, pungent aroma and flavor when cooked.

The step that matters

Pouring off the juice after salting. Salt pulls water out of the tomatoes. If the released juice is not drained, the relish stays watery and dilutes the vinegar and seasonings, so the pieces should be well drained before chopping and cooking.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, sugar, clove, pepper, 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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