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Chow Chow

A pickled relish made from green tomatoes, green peppers, sugar, mustard, cloves, cinnamon, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Chow Chow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop and drain the green tomatoes, then chop the green peppers and add them to the tomatoes.

Cook

  1. In a large pot, combine the tomatoes, peppers, sugar, mustard, ground cloves, ground cinnamon, and vinegar.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until thickened.

  3. Adjust vinegar as needed for desired consistency.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Mustard + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 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

Green tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the relish and release moisture that the mixture cooks down.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that preserves the chow chow and sharpens its flavor.
Mustard
Adds pungent, tangy flavor to the spiced mixture.

The step that matters

Simmer until thickened. Simmering evaporates water from the tomatoes and peppers so the mixture thickens gradually. Stopping too early leaves it loose, while over-reducing can make it dry or scorch on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, sugar, mustard, clove, cinnamon, vinegar):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, sugar, mustard, clove, cinnamon, 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.

More chow chow recipes

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

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