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Mango Pickle

A pickled mango condiment made with mangoes, chilies, mustard seed, turmeric, ginger, garlic, mustard oil, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Turmeric and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,776 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Mango Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut each mango into four parts.

  2. Pound the chillies, mustard seed, turmeric, and dry ginger together until fine.

Make the pickle

  1. Boil enough mustard oil to cover the ingredients.

  2. Add the minced garlic to the pounded mixture.

  3. Mix everything well with the mangoes.

  4. Pour the boiling oil over the mixture and add salt to taste.

  5. Let it cool before using.

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. Turmeric + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Mango + turmerictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together256 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Mango + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together280 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Mustard + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Green mangoes
Provide the tart, firm body that makes up the bulk of the pickle.
Dry red chillies
Supply heat that the pickle carries through its long keeping period.
Mustard oil
Coats the pieces and carries the spices, adding pungency and helping preserve the pickle.
Mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent flavour when ground and bound in the hot oil.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma and savoury depth to the pounded spice mixture.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling oil over the mixture. The oil must be hot enough to coat and seal the mango and spices. Mixing in cooled oil or adding salt before the oil has settled can leave the pickle less evenly coated and less well preserved.

Swap the mango

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, turmeric, ginger, garlic):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Mangothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, turmeric, ginger, garlic. 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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