Skip to main content
Main

Melon Mangoes

A pickled melon dish seasoned with horseradish, shallots, mustard, coriander, and various spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Melon Mangoes

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 ↓

Melon Mangoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the melons

  1. Choose small, late melons that are green and sound. Clean them and make a circular incision around the stem, removing the piece to scoop out the pulp and seeds.

  2. Make a pickle with enough salt and water to float an egg.

  3. After 24 hours, remove the melons and drain them on a sieve.

Fill and seal

  1. Prepare a seasoning with horseradish, shallots, equal parts of mustard and coriander seeds, peppercorns, allspice, mace, and cloves.

  2. Fill the hollow of each melon with the seasoning, adding boiled onions, scalded beans, and cucumbers.

  3. Replace the piece you removed and sew it back on firmly with coarse thread, ensuring the cut sides are up.

  4. Pour the pickle over the melons, covering them by two inches.

Pickle in vinegar

  1. Boil enough vinegar to cover the melons, adding cloves, pepper, and a few capsicums before straining it over the melons.

  2. Cover with a cloth and let the jar stand near the fire for about an hour.

  3. For the next four to five days, heat the vinegar daily, adding garlic, white peppercorns, ginger, and cardamom seeds during the last heating.

  4. Boil for 20 minutes.

  5. Cover the jar when the vinegar is cold 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Shallot + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Horseradish + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Small late melons
Form the hollow vessel that holds the seasoning and absorbs the pickling flavours.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the melons and seasons the pickle through brining.
Vinegar
Acid that preserves the melons and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Mustard seeds
Add pungent heat and sharpness that penetrates the melon flesh once bruised.
Shredded shallots
Contribute a mild sharp onion flavour to the seasoning filling each melon.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that mellows as the vinegar is repeatedly heated.

The step that matters

Repeated heating of the vinegar. Heating the vinegar daily over several days lets the spices and aromatics infuse fully and helps keep the pickle stable. Letting the vinegar cool completely before sealing the jar prevents condensation and spoilage.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (melon, horseradish, shallot, mustard, coriander, allspice, clove):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against melon, horseradish, shallot, mustard, coriander, allspice, 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.

You might also like

Horseradish SauceHorseradish Sauce17 recipesGerman Style String BeansGerman Style String Beans7 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes