Name: Peach Mangoes
Ingredients: peaches; white mustard; cloves; mace; cinnamon; vinegar; sugar

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Peach Mangoes

Ingredients

Directions

Wash the peaches to remove fuzz.
Cut the peaches in half and fill them with white mustard, a few cloves, mace, and cinnamon.
Tie the halves together and place them in a jar.
Pour boiling vinegar sweetened to taste over the peaches for three mornings.

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.

Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Peach + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together625 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,400 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Mustard + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,581 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Mustard + vinegartop 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

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peach, mustard, clove, cinnamon, vinegar, sugar):

Allspicefits better
Cardamomfits better
Nutmegfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, mustard, clove, cinnamon, vinegar, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.