Name: Pickled Melons and Cucumbers
Ingredients: mustard seed; sliced horseradish; cloves of garlic; Cayenne pepper; cloves; mace; vinegar; coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay 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 ↓

Pickled Melons and Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Fill each melon with mustard seed, horseradish, garlic, Cayenne pepper, cloves, and mace.
Insert a small skewer through the slit and tie the melon with string to keep it together.
Boil vinegar with the mixture and pour it hot over the melons.
Cover the melons and let them sit for 24 hours.
Repeat boiling and pouring vinegar over the melons 3 to 4 times.
If the color is not fine, place the jar in a cool oven or simmer over low heat until sufficiently green.
Do not let the mixture boil, as it will spoil the pickle.
Cover until completely cool, then seal with bladder and leather for storage.

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).
Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Horseradish + garlictop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together719 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Mustard + garlictop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together4,053 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,400 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

Swap the mace

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

Allspicefits better
Tarragonfits better
Capersfits better
Macethe original

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