Name: Mangoes
Ingredients: large cucumbers; shallots; brown mustard-seed; sliced horseradish; vinegar; coarse sea salt; ginger; whole pepper; vine leaves

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 ↓

Mangoes

Ingredients

Directions

Cut a slice out of the sides of the cucumbers and remove the pulp.
Fill the cucumbers with shallots, brown mustard-seed, and sliced horseradish.
Tie them up and place them in jars.
Boil the vinegar and pour it over the cucumbers.
Let them stand for four days.
Sprinkle a handful of coarse sea salt over them and cover with vine leaves.
When they are green, place them in jars.
Boil the vinegar with ginger and whole pepper, then pour it over the cucumbers.

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).
Shallot + mustardtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together859 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Shallot + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together376 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).

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

Swap the ginger

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

Capersfits better
Tarragonfits better
Dillfits better
Gingerthe original

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