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Cucumber Mangoes

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard 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. Choose large green cucumbers and cut a long narrow strip out of the sides.

  2. Scoop out the seeds with a teaspoon.

  3. Pound some of the seeds with horseradish, garlic, mustard seed, and white pepper.

  4. Stuff the hollows with the mixture, replace the strips, and bind them with thread.

  5. Boil enough vinegar to cover the cucumbers and pour it over them while hot for three days.

  6. On the last day, boil the vinegar with mace, cloves, black pepper, mustard seed, horseradish, and garlic.

  7. Put the cucumbers into jars, pour the boiling liquid over them, tie the jars tightly, and set aside for use.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 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. Horseradish + garlictop 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 white pepper

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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

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