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Mango Pickle

A pickled mango preserved in a spicy mustard and horseradish dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard 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 ↓

Mango Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mangoes

  1. Cut the mangoes open and remove the seeds.

  2. Soak the mangoes in strong vinegar for 5 days.

Fill and pickle

  1. In a bowl, mix the horseradish, black mustard seed, white mustard seed, chopped onions, ginger, mixed mustard, turmeric, and cloves.

  2. Fill the mangoes with the dressing and tie or sew them closed.

  3. Place the filled mangoes in a jar and pour boiling vinegar over them daily for a week.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Ginger + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Horseradish + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together437 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Mangoes
Form the pickle body, softening in vinegar and absorbing the spiced dressing.
Strong vinegar
Acidifies the mangoes during soaking, helping preserve them and sharpen the flavour.
Black mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent heat and aroma that develops as the seeds are steeped in vinegar.
White mustard seed
Contributes milder pungency and texture to the dressing filling the mangoes.
Grated horseradish
Provides sharp, pungent heat that mellows somewhat during the long pickling.

The step that matters

Pouring boiling vinegar daily for a week. Vinegar is what preserves the pickle and sets its sharp flavour. Repeated pours of hot vinegar keep the jar acidic and warm the contents, helping the spices infuse evenly. Letting the vinegar cool or skipping days weakens that preservation and flavour.

Swap the mango

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (horseradish, mustard, onion, ginger, turmeric, clove, vinegar):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Lemonfits about as well
  4. Mangothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against horseradish, mustard, onion, ginger, turmeric, clove, vinegar. 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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