Name: Mangoes
Ingredients: very small melons or large green tomatoes; very small cucumbers; silverskin onions; mustard seed; allspice; cloves; pepper; salt; cider vinegar

Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mangoes

Ingredients

Directions

Cut off the top of the melons or tomatoes and scrape out the insides.
Stuff them with very small cucumbers, silverskin onions, a dash of mustard seed, allspice, cloves, and whole pepper.
Sew the top back on.
Soak in a saltwater solution for two to three days.
Drain and pour boiling cider vinegar over the stuffed vegetables.

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.

Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,928 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,281 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Melon + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together142 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (melon, cucumber, mustard, allspice, clove, pepper, cider):

Horseradishfits better
Capsicumfits better
Cauliflowerfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against melon, cucumber, mustard, allspice, clove, pepper, cider. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.