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Cucumber Mangoes

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and radish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 212 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Cucumber Mangoes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut a long narrow strip out of the sides of the cucumbers and scoop out the seeds with a teaspoon.

  2. Pound some cucumber flesh with scraped horse-radish, finely-shredded garlic, mustard-seed, and white pepper.

  3. Stuff the hollows of the cucumbers with the mixture, replace the strips, and bind them with thread.

  4. Boil enough vinegar to cover the cucumbers and pour it over them while hot; repeat this for three days.

  5. On the last day, boil the vinegar with mace, cloves, pepper, mustard-seed, a stick of horse-radish, and garlic.

  6. Put the cucumbers into jars, pour the boiling liquid over them, tie the jars tightly, and set aside for use.

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 + radishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together212 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Radish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together297 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  4. Horse + radishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together529 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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 (cucumber, horse, radish, garlic, mustard, white pepper, vinegar):

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

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

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