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
Pick musk melons when they are green and hard.
Soak them in salt water for ten days.
Cut them open and scrape out the insides.
Fill the melons with mustard seed, allspice, horseradish, and small onions.
Sew the melons back up.
Pour scalding vinegar over the filled melons.
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.
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Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together1,832 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together1,928 recipes
Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
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Allspice + horseradishtop 4% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together654 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together9,259 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Horseradish + oniontop 7% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together1,784 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the musk melon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, allspice, horseradish, onion, vinegar):
- Avocadofits better
- Limefits better
- Lemonfits better
- Musk melonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, allspice, horseradish, onion, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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