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Salad

Chow Chow

A pickled vegetable relish made with tomatoes, cabbage, onions, cucumbers, spices, vinegar, and sugar.

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 ↓

Chow Chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Pack the chopped tomatoes, cabbage, onions, and cucumbers in salt overnight.

  2. Drain and soak the vegetables in a mixture of vinegar and water for two days.

Make the relish

  1. Drain again and mix with horseradish, small onions, mustard seed, celery seed, turmeric, cinnamon, boiling vinegar, ground mustard, brown sugar, and olive oil.

  2. Simmer all ingredients together until tender, about 30 minutes.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 a tart, fresh base that softens during cooking.
Cabbage
Adds crisp-tender body and bulk that holds its texture after simmering.
White onions
Add savory depth and sweetness that mellows as they cook down.
Cucumbers
Contribute crunch and moisture, which the salting draws out and the soaking tempers.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the relish and sharpens its flavor.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Drain thoroughly after salting and soaking. Salt draws water out of the vegetables, and any water left behind dilutes the vinegar and sugar mixture and makes the relish watery and less stable. Draining well before adding the boiling vinegar keeps the final texture firm and the flavor concentrated.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, onion, cucumber, horseradish, mustard, celery, turmeric):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, onion, cucumber, horseradish, mustard, celery, turmeric. 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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