Chow Chow

History

This is one of two chow chow recipes — the other titled "Creole Chow Chow" — recorded by Abby Fisher in What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking (San Francisco, 1881), among the earliest cookbooks published by an African-American author, and the second known cookbook by a Black woman in the United States after Malinda Russell's Domestic Cook Book (1866). Fisher was born in Orangeburg, South Carolina, in June 1831 to Abbie Clifton; genealogical research in San Francisco records identifies her father as James J. Andrews, an Orangeburg planter who held some seventy people in slavery, and an 1869 receipt from the Freedman's Savings and Trust in Mobile records her under her mother's name. Before 1865, censuses recorded only an enslaver's name with the age and sex of those he held, so no surviving record names Fisher herself; Karen Hess, who rediscovered her book, noted that absence of documentation. She later settled in the San Francisco area, where she ran a pickle and preserves business — by 1882 she was listed in her own right as a pickle manufacturer — and won prizes for her cooking, including two medals at the San Francisco Mechanics' Institute Fair in 1880 and a diploma at the 1879 Sacramento State Fair. She could neither read nor write; the book was set down at her dictation, drawing, in her own words, on "an experience of upwards of thirty-five years" in Southern cooking, pickling and preserving. She signed the preface "Late of Mobile, Ala.".

Fisher's chow chow is a slow-cooked cabbage-and-cucumber pickle. A large cabbage is cut fine, salted heavily in a jar or keg for twelve hours, then scalded with a gallon of boiling vinegar; cucumbers "green or pickled" are added, seasoned with brown sugar, cayenne and black pepper, turmeric, onions and wine vinegar, and the whole is cooked "in a large porcelain kettle, with a slow fire, for twelve hours," stirred to keep from burning, with more pepper "if you like it hot".

The origins of chow chow as a dish are not settled. Reference and food-history sources describe its beginnings as unclear and cite competing, unproven theories rather than a single documented lineage. The historical record does not document a specific earlier origin for the version Fisher set down. What is documented is her own authorship: a Southern cook, formerly enslaved, who mastered this pickling and preserving craft over decades and published it under her own name.

Ingredients

• 1 large cabbage
• 1 pint coarse salt
• 1 gallon vinegar
• 2 gallons cucumbers
• 2 gallons cucumbers or pickles
• 1 pound brown sugar
• 1 tablespoonful cayenne pepper
• 1 tablespoonful black pepper
• 2 gallons pure wine vinegar
• 2 tablespoonfuls turmeric
• 6 onions

Instructions

1. Take one large cabbage and cut it up fine.
2. Put the cut cabbage in a large jar or keg and sprinkle over it thickly one pint of coarse salt.
3. Let it remain in salt for twelve hours.
4. Scald the cut-up cabbage with one gallon of boiling vinegar.
5. Cut up two gallons of cucumbers (green or pickled) into pieces the size of the end of a little finger and add to the cabbage.
6. Chop very fine two gallons more of cucumbers or pickles and add to the mixture.
7. Combine one pound of brown sugar, one tablespoonful of cayenne pepper, one tablespoonful of black pepper, two gallons of pure wine vinegar, two tablespoonfuls of turmeric, and six onions (chopped fine or grated).
8. Put the mixture into a large porcelain kettle and cook with a slow fire for twelve hours.
9. Stir occasionally to keep it from burning, adding more pepper if desired for a hotter flavor.