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Mangoes

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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

  1. Pick musk melons when they are green and hard.

  2. Soak them in salt water for ten days.

  3. Cut them open and scrape out the insides.

  4. Fill the melons with mustard seed, allspice, horseradish, and small onions.

  5. Sew the melons back up.

  6. Pour scalding vinegar over the filled melons.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Allspice + horseradishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together654 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  5. Horseradish + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked 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):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. 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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