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Salad

Chow Chow Without Cucumbers

A pickled relish of tomatoes, onions, peppers, and cabbage seasoned with vinegar and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 Without Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice green tomatoes and sprinkle with salt. Let them stand overnight.

  2. Drain off liquid. Chop tomatoes finely.

  3. Chop onions, cabbage, and green peppers finely. Add them to tomatoes.

Cook and pack

  1. Cook mixture over heat with enough cider vinegar to cover. Add black pepper, cinnamon, cloves, and allspice to taste. Cook until tender.

  2. Pack into jars without sealing.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 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. Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  4. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

Green tomatoes
Form the bulk of the relish and release liquid when salted.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and aromatic body as they soften during cooking.
Green peppers
Contribute crisp-tender texture and a fresh, slightly bitter vegetable flavor.
Cabbage
Adds bulk and a firm texture that holds up through long cooking.
Cider vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the chow chow its tang and helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Drain off liquid after salting. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes overnight. If the liquid is not drained well, the mixture stays watery and dilutes the vinegar, so the finished relish can be soupy rather than thick.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pepper, cabbage, cider, vinegar, cinnamon, clove):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, cabbage, cider, vinegar, cinnamon, clove. 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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