Skip to main content
Main

Mango Sauce

A mango sauce made by pounding mangoes with salt, sugar, raisins, chilies, garlic, ginger, vinegar, and lime juice, then sun‑drying and straining.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mango and lime match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 506 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Mango Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pound the green mangoes, salt, sugar, and raisins together until well combined.

  2. Add the red chillies, garlic, and green ginger to the mixture and mix well.

Ferment and strain

  1. Expose the mixture to the sun for one month.

  2. After a month, strain the mixture through a piece of cloth, gently pressing to extract the liquid.

  3. The remaining solids can be used as an excellent chutney.

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. Mango + limetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together506 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Ginger + limetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,621 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Mango + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together280 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Garlic + gingertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Garlic + limetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,411 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Green mangoes
Provide the tart, fruity base that gives the sauce its main flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the sharp acidity of the mango and vinegar.
Salt
Draws moisture out of the mango and seasons the mixture.
Raisins
Add sweetness and a deeper, mellow fruity flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the sauce.

The step that matters

Exposing the mixture to the sun for one month. The long sun exposure drives slow fermentation and flavour development. Insufficient time or a shaded spot can leave the sauce flat or spoil it, so the mixture needs steady warmth and a covered, clean container.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mango, sugar, garlic, ginger, vinegar, lime):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mango, sugar, garlic, ginger, vinegar, lime. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes