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Oil Mangos

Oil Mangos are mangoes preserved in a brine, vinegar, and oil with a spicy paste stuffing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 Mangos

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the melons

  1. Place the melons in a pot and pour boiling water mixed with coarse sea salt over them. Cover and let sit overnight.

  2. The next day, cut a slit from the stem to the blossom end and carefully remove the seeds.

  3. Return the melons to the brine and let them soak for eight days.

  4. After eight days, place the melons in strong vinegar for two weeks.

  5. Wipe the insides of the melons with a soft cloth.

Make the stuffing

  1. Prepare the stuffing by washing the ginger, pouring boiling water over it, and letting it stand for 24 hours.

  2. Slice the ginger thin and dry.

  3. Mix the ginger, horseradish, mustard seed, chopped onion, mace, nutmeg, turmeric, and black pepper into a paste with mustard and sweet oil.

Stuff and pack

  1. Stuff each mango with a clove of garlic, pack them in a pot with the slit side up, and sprinkle some stuffing on each layer.

  2. Cover with the best 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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Horseradish + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Melon + gingertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together342 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Melons
Serve as the vessel that is stuffed, brined and pickled.
Horseradish
Adds sharp pungency that carries through the pickling vinegar.
Mustard seed
Contributes a sharp, pungent bite to the stuffing paste.
White race ginger
Adds warm, aromatic heat to the stuffing paste.
Sweet oil
Binds the spices into a paste and carries their aroma.
Strong vinegar
Acidifies and preserves the melons during the long pickling.

The step that matters

Slit and seed the melons before brining. The slit must run cleanly from stem to blossom end so the seeds come out without tearing the shell. A torn or uneven opening lets brine and vinegar in unevenly, which can spoil the melon during the long soak.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (melon, egg, vinegar, ginger, horseradish, mustard, onion):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against melon, egg, vinegar, ginger, horseradish, mustard, onion. 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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