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Dessert

Melon Mangoes

A pickled mango dish preserved in vinegar with mustard, garlic, ginger, and spices.

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

Prepare the melon

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

  2. Mix the seeds with mustard seeds and shredded garlic, then stuff the mixture back into the melon.

  3. Replace the square piece and bind it with a small thread.

Pickle

  1. Boil vinegar with black pepper, coarse sea salt, and sliced ginger.

  2. Pour the boiling vinegar over the mangoes for four consecutive days, adding flour of mustard and scraped horseradish on the last day.

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 whole vessel that soaks up the pickling brine and carries the stuffing.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
Mustard seeds
Add pungency and a sharp, sinus-clearing bite to the stuffing.
Shredded garlic
Adds pungent aroma that deepens as the pickle matures.
Flour of mustard
Adds heat and sharpness to the brine on the final day.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling vinegar over the melon for four days. Repeated pours of hot vinegar gradually penetrate the flesh and build acidity. Each pour must be fully boiling, since heat helps the brine enter and start preserving the melon; skipping days leaves the pickle under-soaked.

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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