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Pickled Vegetable Mangoes

A pickled mango dish containing mustard seeds, horseradish, spices, cabbage, beans, and cucumbers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish 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 ↓

Pickled Vegetable Mangoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Combine white mustard seed, black mustard seed, horseradish, cloves, mace, cinnamon, black pepper, celery seed, and sugar in a bowl.

  2. Mince the cabbage finely.

  3. Pour hot vinegar over the minced cabbage.

  4. Let it stand for 30 minutes.

  5. Drain the cabbage.

  6. Mix the drained cabbage with the spice mixture, adding small beans and cucumbers.

Stuff and scald

  1. Stuff the mixture into the mangoes.

  2. Place the mangoes seam side up in a kettle.

  3. Gently scald with vinegar.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Mangoes
Serve as the fruit vessel that holds the pickling filling.
White mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent heat that gives the pickle its characteristic bite.
Black mustard seed
Adds a sharper, more pungent flavour that deepens the spice profile.
Cabbage
Provides crisp texture and bulk for the filling once drained.
Sugar
Balances the sharp vinegar and spices with sweetness.
Hot vinegar
Acidifies the filling and preserves the pickle through its tang.

The step that matters

Gently scald with vinegar. Heating the mangoes gently softens the fruit and helps it absorb the pickling liquid, while overheating would turn the flesh mushy and lose its shape.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mango, mustard, horseradish, clove, cinnamon, pepper, celery):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mango, mustard, horseradish, clove, cinnamon, pepper, 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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