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 ↓
Cucumber Mangoes
Ingredients
Directions
Cut a small hole in the sides of the cucumbers and remove the seeds.
Mix the seeds with mustard seeds and minced garlic, then stuff the cucumbers with this mixture.
Replace the pieces cut from the sides and bind them with a piece of string.
Boil vinegar with black pepper, coarse sea salt, ginger, and mace.
Pour the boiling vinegar over the cucumbers for four consecutive days.
On the last day, add scraped horseradish and flour of mustard to the vinegar, then seal the cucumbers.
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.
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Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together1,832 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together640 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together2,281 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Cucumber + garlictop 4% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together2,556 recipes
Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
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Garlic + horseradishtop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together719 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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 (cucumber, mustard, garlic, vinegar, pepper, ginger, horseradish):
- Turmericfits better
- Dillfits better
- Tarragonfits better
- Macethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, mustard, garlic, vinegar, pepper, ginger, horseradish. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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