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Mango Peppers

A pickled dish of mango peppers filled with shredded cabbage, cucumbers, onions, and spices, preserved in vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,281 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mango Peppers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peppers

  1. Remove seeds from the mango peppers and soak them in weak salt water for 6 hours.

  2. Wipe the peppers dry with a cloth.

Fill and jar

  1. In a bowl, combine the shredded cabbage, chopped cucumbers, chopped onion, salt, sugar, ground cinnamon, and mustard seeds.

  2. Fill the peppers with the cabbage mixture while it is still crisp.

  3. Sew up the openings of the filled peppers and place them in an earthen jar.

  4. Drain the peppers for 12 hours.

Pickle

  1. In a pot, heat the vinegar, coarse sea salt, and sugar until dissolved, then cool.

  2. Pour the cooled vinegar mixture over the peppers and cover tightly.

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

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

  2. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  4. Cabbage + cucumbertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together722 recipes

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

  5. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mango peppers
Hollow shells that hold the filling and soften slightly as they pickle.
Cabbage
Provides crisp texture and bulk inside the peppers.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the peppers and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with gentle sweetness.
Onion
Adds sharp aromatic flavour to the cabbage filling.

The step that matters

Fill the peppers while the cabbage is still crisp. Shredded cabbage loses its crunch as salt and moisture draw water out of its cells. Filling it while crisp keeps the texture firm after the peppers pickle.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mango, pepper, cabbage, cucumber, sugar, cinnamon, mustard):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mango, pepper, cabbage, cucumber, sugar, cinnamon, mustard. 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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