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Pepper Mangoes

A pickled green pepper dish with cabbage, mustard, horseradish, and spices, stored in vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish 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 ↓

Pepper Mangoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peppers

  1. Remove the seeds and core from the large green peppers using a penknife, being careful not to break them.

  2. Soak the peppers in strong salt brine for three days.

  3. Drain the peppers and soak them in fresh water for 24 hours.

Make the filling

  1. Boil the head of cabbage in salt water.

  2. Chop the boiled cabbage after it cools.

  3. Mix the chopped cabbage with mustard seed, horseradish, nutmeg, garlic, ginger, peppercorns, prepared mustard, sugar, and salad oil.

Pack and pickle

  1. Fill the peppers with the mixture.

  2. Sew or tie the peppers closed.

  3. Pack the filled peppers in a large stone jar.

  4. Pour scalding vinegar over the packed peppers.

  5. Repeat the filling and vinegar process every three days for a total of three times.

  6. Seal the jar.

  7. Store the jar in a cool, dry place for three months.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cabbage + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Large green peppers
Form the outer shell that holds the filling and softens during brining.
Head of cabbage
Provides the bulk of the filling, giving texture and body to the pickle.
Horseradish
Adds sharp pungency that mellows during the long pickling period.
Mustard seed
Contributes sharp, pungent flavour to the filling.
Vinegar
Acidifies the jar, preserving the peppers and giving them their tang.

The step that matters

Soaking in salt brine. Brining draws water out of the peppers and seasons them. If the brine is too weak, the peppers may spoil; the salt and acid together keep the pickle safe during long storage.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, cabbage, mustard, horseradish, nutmeg, clove, ginger):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cabbage, mustard, horseradish, nutmeg, clove, ginger. 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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