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Sweet Mango Pickles

A sweet pickle made from mangoes with a brine of salt, water, vinegar, sugar, and assorted vegetables and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 22 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 584 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Sweet Mango Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the melons

  1. Pare the melons and remove the seeds.

  2. Soak the melons in a brine made of 1 cup salt and 1 pail of water for three days.

  3. Wash the melons in cold water before filling.

Fill and spice

  1. Fill the melons with cauliflower, cucumbers, small onions, nasturtiums, beans, pears, celery, raisins, small tomatoes, and peppers.

  2. Spice the filling with cinnamon buds, black and white mustard seeds, black peppercorns, ginger root, and cloves.

Make the syrup

  1. Boil 1 gallon of vinegar with 3 pounds of sugar and let it cool.

Prepare the cauliflower

  1. Scald the cauliflower in salt water until tender.

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. Cauliflower + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Cauliflower + beanstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Melon + peartop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together49 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Melon + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together142 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Cucumber + beanstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 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

Melons
Form the pickle shell that holds the filling and absorbs the brine and spices.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its sharp flavour.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Salt
Draws water out of the melons during the brine, firming their texture.
Cauliflower
Adds bulk and a firm, tender texture to the filling after scalding.

The step that matters

Soak the melons in brine for three days. Salt draws water out of the melon flesh through osmosis, firming it so it stays crisp rather than turning soft in the vinegar syrup. Too short a soak leaves the melon limp and too long can make it overly salty.

Swap the melon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, cauliflower, cucumber, onion, beans, pear, celery):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Melonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, cauliflower, cucumber, onion, beans, pear, celery. 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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