Name: Pepper Mangoes
Ingredients: green peppers; weak boiling brine; cabbage, finely chopped; cinnamon, ground; mace, ground; cloves, ground; whole white mustard seed; strong boiling vinegar; small piece of alum

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Pepper Mangoes

Ingredients

Directions

Cut a slit in each green pepper and remove the seeds. Wash the peppers.
Pour weak boiling brine over the peppers and let them stand for four days, renewing the brine daily.
Freshen the peppers and stuff them with finely chopped cabbage seasoned with ground cinnamon, mace, cloves, and whole white mustard seed.
Tie a cord around each stuffed pepper and pack them in a jar.
Pour strong boiling vinegar over the peppers for three weeks, adding a small piece of alum to the vinegar the last time.

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.

Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,645 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,081 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,400 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, cabbage, cinnamon, clove, mustard, vinegar):

Allspicefits better
Tarragonfits better
Nutmegfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cabbage, cinnamon, clove, mustard, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.