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Chow-chow

A pickled vegetable dish made with tomatoes, peppers, onions, cabbage, cauliflower, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Chow-chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sprinkle the chopped tomatoes with salt.

  2. Let the tomatoes stand overnight.

  3. Chop the green peppers and onions.

  4. Add the cloves, allspice, cinnamon, mustard seed, and salt.

Cook and pickle

  1. Boil the chopped cabbages and cauliflowers in vinegar for 20 minutes.

  2. Combine all ingredients.

  3. Boil for an additional 5 minutes.

  4. Strain off the vinegar.

  5. Cover with fresh cold vinegar.

  6. Add the celery seed.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Mustard + cabbagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 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

Green tomatoes
Form the bulk of the pickle; salting draws out their water so the pieces stay firmer.
Cabbages
Add bulk and a crisp-tender texture after boiling in vinegar.
Cauliflowers
Add bulk and a firm texture that soaks up the spiced vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides sharp acidity that preserves the vegetables and balances the sweetness of the spices.
Mustard seed
Contributes sharp, pungent flavor to the pickle.
Celery seed
Adds a savory, aromatic flavor to the pickle.

The step that matters

Salting and standing the tomatoes overnight. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes through osmosis. Removing that water before cooking keeps the pieces firm and stops the finished chow chow from becoming watery and diluted.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, onion, clove, allspice, cinnamon, mustard, cabbage. 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.

More chow chow recipes

Relish 49Pickle 25Pickles 16Tomato 9Cucumber 4Salad 3 See all 120 →

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