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To Pickle Mangoes

A pickled cucumber recipe using salt, water, mustard seed, shallots, ginger, horseradish, cloves, mace, peppercorns, garlic, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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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 ↓

To Pickle Mangoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Choose large, green cucumbers and cut a piece out of the side.

  2. Carefully scoop out the insides with an apple corer.

  3. Place cucumbers in a large pot with strong salt and water, stirring twice daily until they turn yellow.

  4. Scald them with fresh salt and water two to three times a day until they are a good green.

Season and fill

  1. Prepare the seasoning by mixing mustard seed, shallots, beaten ginger, horseradish, cloves, mace, peppercorns, and garlic.

  2. Fill the cucumbers with the seasoning and sew the pieces back together with twine.

Pickle and seal

  1. Place them in jars and cover with strong beer vinegar mixed with some ginger and pepper.

  2. Boil the vinegar and any leftover seasoning in a bag, then pour it hot over the cucumbers.

  3. Once cooled, seal the jars tightly.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mustard + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Shallot + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Large cucumbers
Form the main body of the pickle, which softens and absorbs the brine and seasoning.
Strong salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and helps change their colour during the brining steps.
Brown mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that carries through the seasoning filling.
Shallots
Add savoury sweetness and aroma to the seasoning filling.
Strong beer vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickling liquid its tang.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma and savoury depth to the seasoning filling.

The step that matters

Scalding in fresh salt and water. Repeated changes of brine remove water and salt gradually, so the cucumbers firm and keep their colour; skipping or rushing the changes can leave them soft or dull.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, mustard, shallot, ginger, horseradish, clove, garlic):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, mustard, shallot, ginger, horseradish, clove, garlic. 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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