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Dessert

Dried Mangoes

A sun-dried mango preparation seasoned with salt, ginger, turmeric, and chillies.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,776 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Dried Mangoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the peel from the mangoes and cut them into quarters.

  2. Dredge the mango pieces with salt and place them in the sun to dry.

Dry and season

  1. When they start to curl, rub them with a mixture of ginger, turmeric, and chillies, then dredge with more salt.

  2. Return them to the sun and let them dry completely.

Store

  1. Store the dried mangoes in bottles and cork them.

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. Ginger + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Mango + turmerictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together256 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Mango + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together280 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Green mangoes
Firm, tart flesh that dries into a chewy, concentrated snack.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and helps preserve the mango pieces as they dry.
Pounded dry ginger
Adds warm, aromatic pungency to the seasoning rubbed onto the mangoes.
Turmeric
Contributes earthy aroma and a golden colour to the coating.
Chillies
Adds heat to the seasoning, balancing the sourness of the dried fruit.

The step that matters

Drying in the sun. The pieces must dry completely, since leftover moisture lets the mango spoil in storage. Salt helps draw out water, but the sun's gentle heat does the main drying, so the pieces need steady exposure over several days.

Swap the mango

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ginger, turmeric):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Lemonfits about as well
  4. Mangothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, turmeric. 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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