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Dessert

Pickled Mangoes

Pickled mangoes prepared with salt, vinegar, spices, and sugar, then stored in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,776 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Pickled Mangoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mangoes

  1. Soak the mangoes in salt water for two weeks.

  2. Soak the mangoes in pure water for two days, changing the water two or three times.

  3. Remove the seeds from the mangoes.

Pickle the mangoes

  1. Layer grape leaves and mangoes in a kettle, covering with leaves.

  2. Add alum to the kettle.

  3. Pour vinegar over the mangoes.

  4. Boil the mixture for 10-15 minutes.

  5. Remove the leaves from the mangoes.

  6. Let the pickles sit in the vinegar for a week.

Stuff and jar

  1. Prepare the stuffing by mixing ginger, black pepper, mace, allspice, turmeric, garlic, horseradish, black mustard seed, and white mustard seed with olive oil.

  2. Add brown sugar to each mango.

  3. Combine chopped cabbage, small onions, cucumbers, green tomatoes, and chopped imperfect mangoes with the spices.

  4. Stuff the mangoes with the mixture and tie them.

  5. Place the stuffed mangoes in a stone jar.

  6. Pour cider vinegar over the mangoes in the jar.

  7. Store the jar in a bright, dry place until canned.

  8. After a month, add brown sugar 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.

  1. Ginger + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Mango + turmerictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together256 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Pepper + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Mangoes
Form the main body of the pickle, absorbing the brine, vinegar and spiced stuffing.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the mangoes and seasons them during the initial brining.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharp vinegar and spices.
Garlic
Adds pungent flavour to the stuffing.
Black mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent heat to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Pickling the mangoes in vinegar for a week. The mangoes must stay submerged and sit long enough for the acid to penetrate and preserve the fruit; underpickling leaves it unstable and under-flavoured.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mango, egg, vinegar, ginger, pepper, allspice, turmeric):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mango, egg, vinegar, ginger, pepper, allspice, turmeric. 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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