Name: Directions for Mangoes
Ingredients: large cucumbers; scraped horseradish; black mustard seeds; shallots; garlic; fresh ginger; cloves; long pepper; pickling vinegar (alegar)

Why it works: Horseradish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Directions for Mangoes

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the ends off the cucumbers and remove the seeds with a narrow spoon.
Prepare the cucumbers for pickling by greening them.
Chop shallots and garlic with some fresh ginger, a few cloves, and long pepper.
Mix the chopped ingredients and fill the cucumbers completely.
Seal the ends neatly.
For the pickling solution, add 1 ounce of black mustard seeds to every quart of pickling vinegar.
After two weeks, strain the vinegar from the pickles, boil it, and pour it over the pickles while hot.
If the vinegar is insufficient, add more to cover the pickles.

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.

Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,832 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Mustard + shallottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together859 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Horseradish + shallottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together376 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,038 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together640 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

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, horseradish, mustard, shallot, garlic, clove, pepper):

Capersfits better
Tarragonfits better
Turmericfits better
Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, horseradish, mustard, shallot, garlic, clove, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.