Name: Pepper Mangoes
Ingredients: 6 heads of cabbage, chopped fine; 12 large onions, chopped; 2 cups coarse sea salt; ½ pound white mustard seed; ½ pound cinnamon; ½ pound allspice; ½ pound mace; vinegar

Why it works: Cinnamon and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pepper Mangoes

Ingredients

Directions

Make a heavy brine and soak the bottoms and tops of the mangoes overnight.
Mix the chopped cabbage and onions with the salt and let it sit overnight.
Squeeze out all the water from the cabbage and onion mixture.
Add the mustard seed, cinnamon, allspice, and mace to the mixture.
After draining the peppers, fill them with the dressing and sew on the tops.
Cover the filled peppers well with vinegar.

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.

Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,536 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,928 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,645 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,259 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Mustard + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,581 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, onion, mustard, cinnamon, allspice, vinegar):

Clovefits better
Tarragonfits better
Thymefits better
Macethe original

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