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French Chow Chow

A pickled vegetable salad of cucumbers, onions, tomatoes, cauliflower, peppers, seasoned with salt, mustard, turmeric, flour, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and cauliflower match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 584 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

French Chow Chow

Ingredients

Directions

Brine the vegetables

  1. Combine all vegetables in a weak brine made of 1 cup salt and 1 gallon water for 24 hours.

  2. Scald the vegetables in the same brine and then drain.

Make the dressing and pickle

  1. In a bowl, make a paste with the mustard, turmeric, flour, and sugar, moistening with a little vinegar.

  2. Add the remaining vinegar, stirring continuously until smooth and thick.

  3. Mix in the drained pickles.

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. Cucumber + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Cauliflower + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together514 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cauliflower + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 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

Mustard
Provides the sharp, pungent flavor that defines the pickle's character.
Flour
Thickens the mustard paste so the dressing becomes smooth and thick.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Cider vinegar
Acidifies the dressing, preserving the vegetables and adding tang.
Turmeric
Adds yellow color and an earthy aroma to the dressing.
Cauliflower
Forms the firm, crisp bulk of the pickle that holds its texture in the dressing.

The step that matters

Stirring the vinegar into the flour paste. Adding liquid gradually while stirring keeps the flour from clumping, so the dressing becomes smooth and evenly thick rather than lumpy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, tomato, cauliflower, pepper, mustard, turmeric, flour):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, tomato, cauliflower, pepper, mustard, turmeric, flour. 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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