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To Pickle Mangoes

This is a pickled cucumber recipe using salt, water, vinegar, spices, and vine leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 ↓

To Pickle Mangoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Select short thick cucumbers before they turn yellow.

  2. Cut a small square piece from the side and remove all seeds using a marrow spoon.

  3. Soak the cucumbers and cut pieces in strong salt and water for three days.

  4. Lay them on a cloth to dry.

Colour in vinegar

  1. Line a preserving pan with vine leaves and add the cucumbers and cut pieces.

  2. Add sliced ginger and fill the pan with vinegar.

  3. Cover with a plate to trap steam and place by the fire until the cucumbers turn green, being careful not to boil them.

  4. Once they are a good color, remove them from the vinegar and let them cool.

  5. Reserve the vinegar in a jar.

Fill and seal

  1. Prepare the filling by scraping horseradish finely, adding mustard seeds, chopped garlic, chopped shallots, and a little cayenne.

  2. Fill the cucumbers with the mixture, replace the cut piece, and tie with packthread to secure.

  3. Boil the reserved vinegar, adding mace, cloves, long peppers, mustard seed bag, and sliced garlic.

  4. Boil for five minutes.

  5. Pour the hot vinegar over the filled cucumbers and seal the jar with a bladder.

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. Mustard + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Horseradish + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Short thick cucumbers
Form the main body of the pickle, staying firm and crisp through the long brining.
Strong salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers during soaking, firming the flesh and preparing it to take up flavour.
Vinegar
Acidic liquid that preserves the cucumbers and gives the pickle its sharp, sour taste.
Horseradish
Supplies a pungent, sharp heat that flavours the filling.
Mustard seeds
Add a sharp, pungent flavour to the filling and the spiced vinegar.
Garlic
Adds a strong savoury aroma and pungency to the filling and the spiced vinegar.

The step that matters

Keep the vinegar below a boil while colouring the cucumbers. Heating the cucumbers too hard softens their structure and turns them mushy. Gentle warmth lets them turn green while staying firm, and the steam under the plate keeps the heat even.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, horseradish, mustard, garlic, shallot, pepper. 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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