Talk:Chow-chow (food)

Comment
We made a dish called "chow-chow" from an old recipe that came from the farm. It consists of two heads of cabbage, 24 green tomatoes (fresh from the garden), 4 green bell peppers, 4 red bell peppers, 8 onions and 8 carrots. All of these are ground up fine using an old fashioned grinder. We attached the grinder to the picnic table so that afterwards the crumbs could just be hosed off.

After all the vegetables are ground together, they are salted and spooned into a canvas bag. The bag is tied tightly at the neck with a string, then hung up to drain overnight. The next day we washed and sterilized many canning jars, while heating three pints of vinegar in a large pan, to which we added six cups of sugar and stirred until the sugar dissolved completely. Next the vegetables were added to the vinegar-sugar mixture, along with 1 teaspoon of mustard seeds and 1 teaspoon of dill seeds. The mixture is allowed to get hot, but not to boil. We filled 12 canning jars with the mixture and carefully placed the lids on - they had to be turned to just "fingertip" tightness, no more. The next day the jar lids can be tightened the rest of the way.

I guess this recipe comes from my grandmother who grew up on a farm down in southern Missouri. It's called "chow-chow," but I've heard some of the other folks also pronounce it "cha-cha."

L. Williams — Preceding unsigned comment added by 164.119.234.150 (talk • contribs) 15:02, 8 November 2005

Australian dish?
Never heard of an Australian dish dish called chow-chow, nor anything similar to the dish described. Does anyone have a reference for this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gamsarah (talk • contribs) 07:09, 1 May 2006


 * Chow-chow that one might find in Australia would more accurately be described as a northern Indian or Nepal based dish. I would assume it made its way to Australian menus through south Asian immigrants.  It doesn't appear to be a widely known dish in Australia, though I found a few mentions as menu items in south Asian restaurants there.  Perhaps an edit should be made if more information can be found and cited. Jacksinterweb 16:04, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
 * FWIW, I'm Australian and have never heard of an Australian chow-chow. Sfaiku (talk) 08:40, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Never heard of it either... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.138.14.176 (talk • contribs) 00:48, 18 May 2007

Possible Chinese origin?
Possible Indian/ Chinese Origin. I learned in china they also use chaoyaote...that weird vegetable...but on another note. People in Trinidate also use the word chow chow. Its like a salad or antipasto/ side snack. instead of vegetables green or half ripe mangos are used in strips or pieces, mixed with with hot pepper sauce and salt. Could be from India or china as a large percentage of the population originally came from India, and there are also chinese influences from inmmigrants in the CAribbean. or...COULD BE FROM THE American SOUTH...as a bit of the caribbean food have influences from the black american south  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Starbwoy (talk • contribs) 19:37, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

I founded the entry on "chow-chow" when trying to look up a similarly named Chinese dish mentioned in a 19th century book. Like the Pennsylvania relish, it has a wide mixture of ingredients that are cooked into a paste. It is possible that the two are related. Could the dish have originated in China and subsequently been borrowed and adapted by Americans? Unfortunately the Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink has no entry for it at all.

Here is the reference I encountered, recorded in the memoirs of an Englishman traveling in Siam:

"'There was an old Chinaman who had... erected in the centre of his canoe a cooking apparatus, and he ladled out into cups of very goodly dimensions a by no means contemptible-looking soup, commonly known in China as 'Chou-chou,' which consists of a mixture of every kind of meat and vegetables that the earth produces, boiled down into a kind of jelly and seasoned with pepper and salt...'"

Frederick Arthur Neale, Narrative of a Residence in Siam, (London: Office of the National Illustrated Library, 1852), p.24.

Later in the text Neale gives a more detailed description of the dish:

"'The first dish was a species of soup, called by the natives chou chou: it was a composition of pork, fowl, yams, sweet potatoes, ducks, fish, onions, garlic, mint, pepper, salt, and cloves; these were all boiled down to a perfect mash, and then more water and a small piece of bird's-nest were added, till the whole somewhat resembled in substance and colour, very rich turtle-soup.'"

Neale, p.142.

Juxian 08:21, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Possible source of information
While I personally "know" that chowchow has german roots, (as I was told every year when we made it by the vat,) I've found other references that state its roots are (East) Indian, Native American, Chinese, French, Amish or English. Good luck to the person who undertakes this subject. I did notice one person who claims to have researched the subject - please see comment #8 by nikbeehubby at the following link: http://www.soulcysters.net/chow-chow-relish-recipe-235163/

Somethingshiny (talk) 14:30, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

French Canadian
I wouldn't g so far as to say this is a Nova Scotian dish, as it has Acadian origins, which translates to French Canadian. The dish is big in Eastern Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick where there is a very large francophone population. It's also known as green tomato ketchup. Superfly94 (talk) 16:01, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: page moved. Armbrust The Homunculus 07:40, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Chow-chow → Chow-chow (food) – The name of this dish isn't consistently written with a hyphen, so I suspect most readers looking up this title or its redirect Chowchow are actually looking for the well-known dog breed Chow Chow. I'd like to see this page moved to a clearer title, with the hyphenated and unspaced variants redirecting there as a primary topic. --BDD (talk) 21:43, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Support per nom. Timmyshin (talk) 00:22, 5 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Support. The dog is the clear primary topic. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:17, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.