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Pepper Mangoes

A pickled dish of peppers stuffed with cabbage, mustard seeds, allspice, and optional horseradish or nasturtiums.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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. Cut the tops off the peppers and remove the seeds, saving the tops.

  2. Stand the peppers upright in a tub and add 1 teaspoon of salt to each, then cover with cold water and soak overnight.

  3. In the morning, drain and wash the peppers well in cold water.

Stuff and pickle

  1. Shred the cabbage using a slaw cutter and mix with allspice, mustard seeds, salt, and mace if desired.

  2. Stuff the mixture into the peppers, replace the tops, and tie with soft twine.

  3. Stand the stuffed peppers upright in stone jars and cover with cold vinegar.

  4. Let them sit for one week, then drain off the vinegar.

  5. Cover with fresh cold vinegar and add nasturtiums or horseradish.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Allspice + mustardtop 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. Allspice + horseradishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together654 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the filling, adding crisp texture that holds up through pickling.
Mustard seeds
Add a sharp, pungent flavour that mellows as the peppers pickle.
Vinegar
Acidifies the peppers, preserving them and giving the pickle its tang.
Salt
Draws water out of the peppers during soaking, firming their flesh and seasoning the filling.

The step that matters

Draining and re-covering with fresh vinegar after one week. Vinegar that has sat with the peppers picks up their liquid and loses strength, so replacing it with fresh cold vinegar keeps the acidity high enough to preserve the pickle.

Swap the mace

The recipe marks mace as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, cabbage, allspice, mustard, horseradish, vinegar):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cabbage, allspice, mustard, horseradish, vinegar. 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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