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Old Virginia Chow Chow

A pickled vegetable relish made with tomatoes, cabbage, peppers, celery, and spices, left to mature for a month.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Old Virginia Chow Chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the tomatoes, cabbage, peppers, and celery very fine.

  2. Cover the mixture with coarse sea salt and let it stand for 24 hours.

  3. Drain the brine thoroughly.

Cook

  1. Cover the mixture with vinegar and add the sugar.

  2. Scald the mixture in a porcelain kettle for 1 hour.

  3. Remove from heat and add horseradish, mustard seed, cloves, spice, ginger, and ground mustard.

Store

  1. Tie it up tightly and let it stand for a month before using.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cabbage + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the bulk and juicy body of the relish.
Green tomatoes
Add firmer texture and tartness to the chopped mixture.
Cabbage
Adds bulk and a crisp texture that holds up to cooking.
Sugar
Sweetens the relish and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the relish and gives it its tang.
Horseradish
Adds a sharp, pungent heat that mellows during the month of standing.

The step that matters

Draining the brine thoroughly. Salt draws large amounts of water out of the vegetables. If liquid is left behind, the relish dilutes and can spoil, so it must be drained well before the vinegar and sugar are added.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, pepper, celery, vinegar, sugar, horseradish, mustard):

  1. Broccolifits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, pepper, celery, vinegar, sugar, horseradish, 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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