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Cucumber Mangoes

A pickled cucumber recipe with vinegar, spices, and horseradish, preserved in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 640 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cucumber Mangoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Choose large, green cucumbers and cut a strip down one side.

  2. Remove all seeds with a teaspoon.

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

  4. Fill the cucumbers with this mixture.

  5. Replace the strip and tie it in place with thread.

Pickle in hot vinegar

  1. Place the cucumbers in a basin and cover them with boiling hot vinegar.

  2. The next day, pour off the vinegar.

  3. Boil the vinegar.

  4. Pour the boiled vinegar over the cucumbers again.

  5. Repeat this process twice more at 24-hour intervals.

  6. For the final boiling, add 1 oz each of mace and cloves, 1 oz each of pepper and mustard seed, half a stick of horseradish, and half a clove of garlic for each quart of vinegar.

Jar and store

  1. Pack the cucumbers in jars.

  2. Pour the boiling vinegar over them.

  3. Tie down closely.

  4. Store.

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

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

  2. Cucumber + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,556 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Horseradish + garlictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together719 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Ginger + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 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

Large green cucumbers
Form the body of the pickle, taking on flavour as they soak in the vinegar.
White wine vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the cucumbers.
Mace
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the pickling liquid.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, pungent heat to the pickle.
Horseradish
Contributes a pungent, sharp bite that mellows during pickling.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, slightly bitter pungency to the filling and liquid.

The step that matters

Repeated boiling of the vinegar. Each pour of boiling vinegar over the cucumbers adds heat and acidity that helps preserve them and carry flavour inside. Letting the vinegar cool or skipping a repeat may leave the cucumbers under-pickled and prone to spoilage.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, white wine, vinegar, ginger, pepper, horseradish, garlic. 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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