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Grandmother's Mango Pickle

A pickled mango dish with cabbage, mustard seeds, celery seeds, cloves, allspice, pickled onions, salad oil, brown sugar, horseradish, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Grandmother's Mango Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mangoes

  1. Remove mangoes from brine.

  2. Scald them in a brass kettle with alum water and vinegar.

Stuff and pack

  1. In a bowl, combine cabbage, white mustard seeds, black mustard seeds, celery seeds, cloves, allspice, pickled onions, salad oil, and 1 pound of brown sugar to make the stuffing.

  2. Stuff the mangoes with the mixture.

  3. Place the stuffed mangoes in a jar and cover them with cold vinegar.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  5. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mangoes
Form the main body of the pickle, absorbing the spiced stuffing and vinegar.
White mustard seeds
Provide sharp, pungent heat and a characteristic mustard flavour in the stuffing.
Black mustard seeds
Add a stronger, more pungent bite to the spice mix.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Cold vinegar
Acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its tang.
Cabbage
Adds crunch and bulk to the stuffing.

Swap the mango

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, mustard, celery, clove, allspice, onion, sugar):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Mangothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, mustard, celery, clove, allspice, onion, 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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