Skip to main content
Main

Pepper Mangoes

Pickled peppers stuffed with a seasoned cabbage mixture, preserved with sugar, vinegar, and horse radish roots.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and radish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 297 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Pepper Mangoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peppers

  1. Cut the tops off the bell peppers, leaving the stems to form lids.

  2. Scrape out the seeds.

  3. Soak the peppers in salt water overnight, using 1 cup of salt per pail of water.

  4. Drain the peppers upside down on a tray.

Make the filling

  1. Chop fresh cabbage very fine.

  2. For each gallon of chopped cabbage, mix in 1 cup sugar, 1 tablespoon white mustard seed, 1 tablespoon black mustard seed, and 1 tablespoon celery seed.

  3. Let the mixture stand for 1 hour.

  4. Squeeze the cabbage mixture to remove excess moisture.

  5. Stuff the peppers tightly with the mixture.

Pack and pickle

  1. Place a lid on each stuffed pepper and secure with 3 wooden toothpicks.

  2. Pack the peppers into a 2 or 3-gallon stone jar, leaving space for a plate and weight.

  3. Add several horse radish roots on top and sprinkle ½ cup sugar into the jar to prevent spoilage.

  4. Cover the peppers with cider vinegar, ensuring they are submerged. Use a plate and weight if necessary.

  5. Seal the jar with thick paper.

  6. Store in a cool place; they will keep for a year.

Serve

  1. Remove the toothpicks and lid, and serve the mangoes in a pickle dish.

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 + radishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together297 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cabbage + radishtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together106 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Horse + radishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together529 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Bell peppers
Form the edible container that holds the filling and keeps its shape.
Fresh cabbage
Provides the bulk of the filling and a crisp, crunchy texture after pickling.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour that mellows during pickling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that flavours the pickle and helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Keep the peppers fully submerged in the vinegar. Peppers left above the liquid are exposed to air, which lets mould and spoilage microbes grow on the surface. Covering everything with vinegar and weighting it down keeps the acidic brine in contact with the whole pickle.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, cabbage, sugar, mustard, horse, radish, cider):

  1. Allspicefits about as well
  2. Turmericfits about as well
  3. Celerythe original
  4. Cinnamonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cabbage, sugar, mustard, horse, radish, cider. 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.

You might also like

Horseradish SauceHorseradish Sauce23 recipesHorseradish ButterHorseradish Butter6 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesRed CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipes