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Pe&Ch Mangoes

A preserved peach recipe with horseradish, mace, cinnamon, cloves, mustard seeds, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard 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 ↓

Pe&Ch Mangoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peaches

  1. Wash and wipe the peaches, then cut them in half.

  2. Fill the peach halves with grated horseradish, mace, cinnamon, cloves, and white mustard seeds.

  3. Place the filled peaches into a jar.

Make the syrup and finish

  1. In a pot, boil together 1 pound of sugar and 3 pints of vinegar with the same spices.

  2. Once the mixture is cool, pour it over the peaches in the jar.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Horseradish + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together515 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Peach + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. 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

What each ingredient does

Peaches
Provide the fruit that becomes tender and sweet-tart as it sits in the spiced vinegar.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Acts as the preserving liquid, adding acidity that keeps the fruit tangy.

The step that matters

Let the syrup cool before pouring it over the peaches. Pouring boiling liquid onto fruit can soften it unevenly and cause it to cook rather than steep. Cooling the mixture first lets the peaches hold their shape while they absorb the flavour.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, horseradish, cinnamon, clove, mustard, sugar, 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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