Name: Cucumber Mangoes
Ingredients: large Turkey cucumbers; mustard seed; shredded garlic; grated horseradish; hot vinegar; black pepper; mustard flour; coarse sea salt

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

Cut a long, narrow piece from the sides of the cucumbers and scoop out the seeds.
Mix some of the scooped-out cucumber with mustard seed, garlic, and horseradish.
Stuff the mixture back into the cucumbers and replace the cut piece.
Bind the cucumbers with thread.
Pour hot vinegar over the cucumbers for three consecutive days.
On the last day, boil the vinegar with black pepper, mustard flour, and salt.
Place the cucumbers in jars and pour the boiling vinegar over them.
Once cooled, cover 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.

Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,832 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together640 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,281 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cucumber + garlictop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,556 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
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, vinegar, pepper, flour):

Capersfits better
Tarragonfits better
Turmericfits better
Garlicthe original

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