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Dessert

Melon Mangoes

A melon stuffed with its own seeds, mustard seeds, garlic, and spices, then boiled in vinegar for several days.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Melon Mangoes

Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Melon Mangoes

Ingredients

Directions

Stuff the melon

  1. Cut a small square piece out of one side of the melon and remove the seeds.

  2. Mix the seeds with mustard seeds and shredded garlic.

  3. Stuff the mixture back into the melon.

  4. Replace the square piece.

  5. Bind it with a small piece of thread.

Pickle

  1. Boil vinegar with black pepper, salt, and ginger.

  2. Pour the boiled vinegar over the stuffed melon for four consecutive days.

  3. Add flour of mustard and scraped horseradish to the boiling vinegar.

  4. Pour the mixture over the melon.

  5. Ensure the melon is well covered 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Garlic + horseradishtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together719 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Mustard + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Garlic + gingertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Melon + gingertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together342 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Melon
Serves as the vessel and body of the pickle, absorbing the vinegar brine over days.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves and sharpens the flavour of the melon.
Mustard seeds
Add pungent, sharp heat to the stuffing mixture.
Scraped horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent heat that penetrates the brine.
Flour of mustard
Thickens the boiled vinegar slightly and adds mustard pungency.

The step that matters

Keep the melon fully covered with vinegar. Any part of the melon left above the liquid can spoil or mould, because the acidic brine only protects the submerged surface. Repeated pouring over the days keeps the whole melon covered.

Swap the melon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, garlic, vinegar, pepper, ginger, flour, horseradish):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Melonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, garlic, vinegar, pepper, ginger, flour, horseradish. 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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