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Oil Mangoes

A pickled mango preserved in oil, spices, mustard, vinegar, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Oil Mangoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Combine ginger, horseradish, mustard seed, black pepper, mace, cloves, turmeric, and oil or butter in a mortar.

  2. Beat the mixture until well mixed.

  3. Soak the mangoes in salt for 3 days.

  4. Wipe the mangoes dry.

Fill and pickle

  1. Fill the mangoes with the mixture from the mortar.

  2. If any mixture remains, place it in a jar with the filled mangoes.

  3. Cover the mangoes with homemade mustard.

  4. Pour boiling vinegar over the mangoes.

  5. Add sugar to taste.

Rest and store

  1. Allow the mangoes to sit for several weeks before using.

  2. Store the mangoes for years.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Ginger + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Horseradish + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together437 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Mustard seed
Provides the sharp, pungent heat that defines the pickle's flavour.
Horseradish
Adds sharp pungency that mellows during long pickling.
Ginger
Contributes aromatic warmth and a gently spicy bite.
Boiling vinegar
Acidity that preserves the mangoes and sharpens the overall flavour.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of vinegar and mustard with sweetness.

The step that matters

Soaking the mangoes in salt. Salt draws water out of the mangoes through osmosis, firming the fruit and reducing spoilage risk before filling. Skipping or shortening the soak leaves the flesh soft and more prone to spoiling during long storage.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ginger, horseradish, mustard, pepper, clove, turmeric, butter):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, horseradish, mustard, pepper, clove, turmeric, butter. 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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