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Preserve

Green Mango Preserve

A preserve made from grated green mangoes, sugar, lime water, and water, simmered until thickened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Mango and lime match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 506 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Green Mango Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mangoes

  1. Grate the outer peel of the mangoes finely and cut them lengthwise to remove the stones.

  2. Soak the mangoes in lime water.

  3. Transfer the mangoes to a clean preserving pan. Add water to the pan.

  4. Parboil the mangoes, skimming well.

  5. Drain the mangoes in a sieve and let all the water drain away.

Make the preserve

  1. Make a syrup with the sugar.

  2. Add the cooled parboiled mangoes to the syrup.

  3. Simmer the mangoes. Skim off the scum until the sugar begins to crystallize.

  4. Remove the pan from heat.

  5. Pour the preserve into wide-mouthed bottles or jars.

Store and keep

  1. Check the syrup every 2-3 days.

  2. If the syrup thins, reboil it. Warm the mangoes in the syrup just before reboiling.

  3. Securely cork the bottles once fermentation has ceased.

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. Mango + limetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together506 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Mango + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together561 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + limetop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,332 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Green mangoes
Firm, tart unripe fruit that holds its shape and gives the preserve its body during cooking.
Sugar
Forms the syrup that preserves the fruit and gives the preserve its sweetness and thickness.
Lime water
Soaking in it firms the mangoes' texture and adds a mild acidity.

The step that matters

Skimming during parboiling and simmering. Skimming removes foam and scum that would otherwise cloud the syrup and carry impurities that can spoil the preserve. Keeping the syrup clear helps the fruit keep well in storage.

Swap the lime

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mango, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Limethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mango, sugar. 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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