Skip to main content
Main

Chow-chow

A pickled vegetable dish with beans, tomatoes, peppers, onions, cucumbers, cauliflower, and mustard, boiled in cider.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beans and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Chow-chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Salt the beans, tomatoes, peppers, and onions, and let them stand under pressure for 12 hours.

  2. Make a pickle for the cucumbers and cauliflower, and pour it over them for the same time.

  3. Remove the corn from the cob and mix everything well in a large kettle, except for the oil and turmeric powder.

Cook and finish

  1. Cover the mixture with strong cider and boil for 1 hour.

  2. Once removed from the stove, add the turmeric and mix thoroughly, then add the oil and mix well with the other ingredients.

  3. Prepare this recipe at the end of September or the beginning of October.

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. Beans + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Beans + cauliflowertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Beans + corntop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Beans + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 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

Small white onions
Hold their shape and add mild sweetness and body during the long salt standing and boiling.
Black mustard seed
Supplies sharp, pungent flavor that mellows as the pickle cooks.
White mustard seed
Adds mild, tangy heat that gives the pickle its characteristic bite.
Tomatoes
Contribute moisture and acidity that help form the cooking liquid.
Sugar corn
Adds sweetness and tender texture to the mixed vegetables.

The step that matters

Adding the turmeric after cooking. Turmeric's yellow color and flavor fade with prolonged heat, so adding it off the stove after the one-hour boil keeps the color bright and the flavor fresh.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, cauliflower, tomato, mustard, pepper, sugar, corn):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, cauliflower, tomato, mustard, pepper, sugar, corn. 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.

More chow chow recipes

Relish 49Pickle 25Pickles 16Tomato 9Cucumber 4Salad 3 See all 120 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipes