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Green Pepper Mango Pickles

Pickled green peppers preserved in a seasoned brine with vinegar, salt, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Green Pepper Mango Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peppers

  1. Seed the green peppers and soak them in a mixture of salt and water for ten days.

  2. After ten days, soak the peppers in clear water for twenty-four hours.

  3. Pack the peppers in a jar.

  4. Scald the peppers with a mixture of vinegar and water, adding a small piece of alum, for three consecutive days.

Stuff and pickle

  1. Prepare the stuffing by finely chopping the dried cabbage and mixing it with grated horseradish, ginger, mustard, mace, cloves, and cinnamon.

  2. Sew each pepper closed.

  3. Pack the stuffed peppers in a jar.

  4. Boil strong vinegar and pour it over the packed peppers.

  5. Cover tightly to keep the steam in.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cabbage + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Green peppers
Main vegetable; soaking and scalding soften them so they can be stuffed and packed.
Dried cabbage
Forms the bulk of the stuffing, adding body and texture inside each pepper.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the peppers and gives the pickle its sharp flavor.
Ground mace
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the stuffing.
Ground cloves
Adds strong, aromatic spice flavor to the stuffing.
Ground cinnamon
Adds sweet, warm aromatic flavor to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Scalding with vinegar and alum for three consecutive days. Alum helps peppers stay firm rather than turning soft during repeated heating, and repeating the scald over several days gradually softens and prepares the peppers for pickling. Skipping days or overheating can leave them mushy.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, vinegar, cabbage, horseradish, ginger, mustard, clove. 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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