Home › Pickles-Relishes › Chow Chow
Chow Chow
1 qt. cucumbers-cut small 1 pt. small onions 1 pt. green tomatoes-cut small 1 qt. cauliflower 3 green peppers, cut fine 1 pt. celery, cut small Put all vegetables except celery into a weak brine and let stand 24 hours; then scald in same brine until onions are clear; then drain. Make dressing of 3 T mustard 1/2 T tumeric 1/2 C flour Mix thoroughly and add 1 'qt.' best cider vinegar. Scald until cooked and pour over vegetables. Put in mason jars and seal.
A standard turn-of-the-century mixed pickle, but the preserving method behind it is one modern canning science has specifically ruled out. The notes below explain what fails rather than how to patch it.
- Open-kettle sealingThe recipe pours hot dressing over drained vegetables, fills jars and seals, with no boiling-water processing at all. This "open-kettle" method was standard in 1900 and is now rejected outright: the jar contents never reach or hold a temperature that destroys spoilage organisms, and the seal itself is unreliable. Any tested modern pickle recipe gives a processing time.
- The flour is the real problemHalf a cup of flour thickens the dressing, and thickened, starchy contents slow heat penetration to the centre of a jar so badly that no home processing time can be validated for them. Current guidance is that flour- or starch-thickened mixtures should not be home canned in any form.
- Unmeasured brine"A weak brine" is not a specification. The 24-hour salt soak here draws water out of the vegetables and firms them, but the salt concentration is unknown and cannot be relied on for any preservative effect.
- Vinegar strength is unstated"best cider vinegar" in 1900 carried no guaranteed acidity, and home- or farm-made cider vinegar in particular could fall below the 5 percent acetic acid that safe pickling depends on. The vegetables' own water dilutes it further once the jars stand.
- Low-acid vegetables in the mixCucumbers, cauliflower, onions, celery and peppers are all low-acid. In an unprocessed, sealed, thickened, uncertainly acidified jar held at room temperature, they present exactly the conditions associated with Clostridium botulinum. Botulinum toxin gives no reliable warning in smell or appearance.
- If you want chow chowUse a current tested recipe from a reputable canning authority. The vegetable proportions here are a reasonable guide to the flavour of the thing; the preserving procedure is not.
- Reading the old measuresT is tablespoon, C is cup. "Scald in the same brine until the onions are clear" means simmer until the onion pieces turn translucent.
Chow chow is the American name for a coarse mustard-and-turmeric mixed pickle, and the term is generally traced to pidgin trade English of the China coast, where chow-chow meant a mixture or medley of odds and ends; it entered English cookery vocabulary through nineteenth-century shipping and Anglo-Indian usage rather than through any single kitchen. In the United States it settled into two broad forms, the Pennsylvania Dutch sweet-and-sour version heavy with beans and corn, and the yellow mustard-pickle version seen here, which is close to an English piccalilli under a borrowed name. It is an end-of-season recipe: the last cucumbers, green tomatoes that would never ripen, and a head of cauliflower, put up in quantity. The turmeric is there for colour as much as flavour, and the flour thickening, common in mustard pickles of the period, gave the relish a clinging sauce rather than a thin brine.