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Chili Verdi

A sautéed mango and egg dish flavored with butter, salt, pepper, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mango and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 471 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Chili Verdi

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mangoes

  1. Toast the mangoes over coals until blistered, then peel off the skin and chop them finely.

Cook and serve

  1. In a frying pan, melt the butter and cook the mangoes slowly for 15 minutes, seasoning with salt and pepper.

  2. In a bowl, break the eggs (4 eggs for each mango) and pour them into the frying pan with the mangoes.

  3. Stir quickly until the eggs are cooked, then pour in the vinegar and serve hot or cold.

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. Mango + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together471 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Mango + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together256 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Mango + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together283 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Mangoes
Provide the main fruit flavour and sweetness, and soft body once slowly cooked.
Eggs
Set as they cook, binding the mango into a soft, scrambled texture.
Vinegar
Adds a sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the mango.

The step that matters

Stirring the eggs quickly. Eggs set quickly over heat; stirring keeps curds small and tender, while leaving them still can overcook and toughen them.

Swap the mango

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, vinegar, pepper):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Plumfits about as well
  3. Mangothe original
  4. Cherryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, vinegar, pepper. 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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