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Green Muskmelon Mangoes

A pickled dish of muskmelons and mangoes with cabbage, spices, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Green Muskmelon Mangoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the melons

  1. Wash the melons and pare them thinly. Cut out 1 or 2 sections and remove the seeds.

  2. Soak the melons in salt water overnight using 1 cup of salt for 2 gallons of water.

  3. In a pot, combine 1 quart of vinegar and 2 quarts of water. Cook the melons until a fork can be inserted easily.

  4. Drain the melons and repeat the cooking process with more melons.

Make the filling

  1. Chop fresh cabbage finely. For each gallon of chopped cabbage, add 1 cup sugar, 1 tablespoon salt, and 1 tablespoon whole cloves.

  2. Stuff each melon with the cabbage filling and add 4 small cucumber pickles, 4 green radish pods, and 4 green nasturtium seeds. Replace the sections and tie them with twine.

Pickle and serve

  1. Place the melons in a stone jar and pour over them 1 gallon of boiling vinegar, 2 tablespoons whole cloves, 2 tablespoons whole cinnamon, 1 tablespoon white ginger root, and 5 pounds of sugar. Boil the mixture for 20 minutes.

  2. Let the melons stand for 2 days, then drain off the liquid and boil it again. If the mixture is not strong enough, add more vinegar.

  3. Pour the hot mixture over the mangoes. Tie the mangoes up as you would for pepper mangoes.

  4. When serving, cut the mangoes in half and place them 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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cucumber + radishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together212 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Radish + gingertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together172 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Melons (in the method)
Form the edible shell that is stuffed, cooked, and pickled in the spiced vinegar.
Cabbage (in the method)
Provides the bulk of the filling that is seasoned with sugar, salt, and cloves.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickling liquid for the melons.
Sugar
Sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar in the filling and pickling liquid.
Whole cloves
Aromatic spice that flavours the filling and the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Boil the pickling liquid before pouring it over the melons. The vinegar, sugar and spices must be brought to a boil so the hot liquid can penetrate the melon and help preserve it; the record also notes that the liquid should be checked and strengthened with more vinegar if needed.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, sugar, clove, radish, cinnamon, ginger):

  1. Mustardfits about as well
  2. Cucumberthe original
  3. Beetrootfits about as well
  4. Horseradishfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, clove, radish, cinnamon, ginger. 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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