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Melon Mangoes

A melon stuffed with mustard seed, garlic, and spices, then preserved in a vinegar brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 small square piece from one side of the melon and remove the seeds.

  2. Mix the seeds with mustard seeds and shredded garlic.

  3. Stuff the mixture into the melon and replace the square piece.

  4. Bind it with pack-thread.

Pickle in vinegar

  1. Boil vinegar with pepper, salt, and ginger.

  2. Pour the boiling vinegar over the melons each day for four days.

  3. On the last day, add flour of mustard and scraped horseradish to the boiling vinegar.

  4. Ensure the melons are well covered with vinegar.

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
Forms the vessel that is stuffed and absorbs the pickling liquid's flavour.
Mustard seeds
Provide a sharp, pungent bite to the stuffing.
Vinegar
Acidic pickling liquid that preserves the melon and gives it its sour flavour.
Flour of mustard
Adds pungency and heat to the pickling liquid on the final day.
Scraped horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent heat to the pickling liquid on the final day.

The step that matters

Keep the melons fully submerged in vinegar. Any part of the melon left above the liquid can spoil or mould, because exposed surfaces are not protected by the acidic brine. Repeated pouring of boiling vinegar over the melons helps keep them covered and flavoured each day.

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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