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Cucumber Mangoes

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Cucumber Mangoes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut a long, narrow piece out of the sides of the cucumbers and scoop out the seeds.

  2. Mix the seeds with mustard seed, garlic, and horseradish.

  3. Stuff the mixture into the cucumbers and replace the cut piece.

  4. Bind the cucumbers with thread.

  5. Pour hot vinegar over the cucumbers for three days, boiling it with black pepper, mustard flour, and salt the last time.

  6. Place the cucumbers in jars and pour the boiling vinegar over them.

  7. When cold, cover the jars.

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

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

  3. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

  4. Cucumber + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,556 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Garlic + horseradishtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked 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 garlic

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, cucumber, mustard, horseradish, pepper, flour, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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