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Chow Chow

A pickled relish made from green tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, cauliflower, and peppers, seasoned with mustard, flour, sugar, spices, 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 ↓

Chow Chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Soak the green tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, cauliflower, and green peppers in salt water for 24 hours.

  2. Scald the vegetables in salt water and drain them.

Make the dressing

  1. In a pot, combine 1 gallon of cider vinegar with white mustard, flour, brown sugar, turmeric, ground cloves, and celery seed.

  2. Stir the mustard and flour with a little cold vinegar, then add the mixture to the boiling vinegar mixture.

  3. Boil everything together for 5 minutes.

Combine and finish

  1. Mix the boiled mixture with the 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 + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  5. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 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
Provide the bulk of the relish and absorb the pickling brine's tang and flavour.
Cider vinegar
Supplies the acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the relish its sharp taste.
White mustard
Adds pungent heat and flavour that mellows during cooking.
Flour
Thickens the boiled vinegar mixture so it clings to the vegetables.
Brown sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Cauliflower
Adds firm texture that holds up through soaking and boiling.

The step that matters

Stirring the mustard and flour into cold vinegar before adding them. Flour and mustard added straight to hot liquid clump instantly. Mixing them into a little cold vinegar first makes a smooth slurry that thickens evenly when returned to the boil.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, cucumber, cauliflower, pepper, cider, vinegar, mustard. 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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