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May's Chow Chow

A pickled vegetable mixture of cucumbers, onions, tomatoes, and cauliflower flavored with turmeric, sugar, flour, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

May's Chow Chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Combine cucumbers, onions, green tomatoes, and cauliflower in a large bowl. Cover with salt water and let stand overnight.

  2. Drain the vegetables and scald them in weak vinegar. Drain again.

Make the dressing and serve

  1. In a pot, mix turmeric, sugar, flour, and vinegar. Boil the mixture and pour it over 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 + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together514 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cucumber + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  4. Cucumber + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,102 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Turmeric + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,637 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the bulk of the pickle and keep a crisp bite after brining and scalding.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and aroma that mellow during pickling.
Green tomatoes
Contribute tartness and body to the mixed vegetables.
Cauliflower
Adds firm texture and absorbs the golden dressing.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and rounds out the flavor.
Flour
Thickens the boiled dressing so it clings to the vegetables.

The step that matters

Draining after the salt-water soak. Vegetables left wet dilute the vinegar dressing and weaken its flavor and set. Draining well, then draining again after scalding, keeps the pickle crisp and the sauce thick.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, tomato, cauliflower, turmeric, sugar, flour, 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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