Name: Sweet Pickle Mangoes
Ingredients: 2 cantaloupes, not quite ripe; Coarse sea salt (for brining); Vinegar (for boiling); 1 pound sugar; Spices (to taste); Small portions of rind cut up; Mustard seed; Celery seed; Horseradish

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 ↓

Sweet Pickle Mangoes

Ingredients

Directions

Remove the insides of the cantaloupes and brine them in coarse sea salt for four days.
After four days, soak and wash the cantaloupes until fresh.
Boil the cantaloupes in vinegar four or five times.
Stuff the cantaloupes with small portions of rind, mustard seed, celery seed, and horseradish.
In a pot, combine 1 pint of fresh vinegar with 1 pound of sugar and boil.
Add spices to the sweet vinegar according to taste.

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.

Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,832 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,169 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Celery + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together835 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Vinegar + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,609 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, sugar, mustard, horseradish):

Capersfits better
Tarragonfits better
Dillfits better
Celerythe original

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