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Cucumber Mangoes

A pickled cucumber preserved with horseradish, garlic, mustard seed, pepper, mace, cloves, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Cucumber Mangoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Select large, green cucumbers that are not very ripe.

  2. Cut a long, narrow strip out of the side of each cucumber and scoop out the seeds with a teaspoon.

  3. Pound some of the seeds with scraped horseradish, garlic, mustard seed, and white pepper.

  4. Stuff the hollows of the cucumbers with the mixture, replace the strips, and bind them with thread.

Pickle

  1. Boil enough vinegar to cover the cucumbers.

  2. Pour the hot vinegar over the cucumbers.

  3. Repeat the boiling and pouring for three days.

  4. On the last day, boil the vinegar with ½ ounce of mace, ½ ounce of cloves, 2 ounces of black pepper, 2 ounces of mustard seed, a stick of horseradish, and 1 garlic clove for every ½ gallon of vinegar.

  5. Place the cucumbers in jars, pour the boiling liquid over them, tie the jars tightly, and set aside for use.

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. Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

  3. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

  4. Cucumber + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,556 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Horseradish + garlictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together719 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Large green cucumbers
Their firm, unripe flesh holds its crunch through the hot vinegar pickling.
Vinegar
Acidity preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickle its sharp, tangy flavor.
Horseradish
Provides a pungent, sharp heat that flavors the stuffing and the pickling liquid.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavor to the stuffing and the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Repeating the boiling and pouring of vinegar for three days. Repeated hot vinegar pours gradually heat and acidify the cucumbers, helping them absorb flavor and stay firm rather than going soft. Skipping days or letting the vinegar cool weakens this effect.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, horseradish, garlic, mustard, vinegar, mace, clove):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, horseradish, garlic, mustard, vinegar, mace, clove. 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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