Mangoes

 Ingredients

• Mangoes
• Salt
• Vinegar
• Water
• Alum
• Cabbage leaves
• 1 lb. ginger
• 1 lb. grated horse radish
• 1/2 lb. garlic
• 2 oz. black mustard seed
• 2 oz. celery seed
• 2 oz. ground mace
• 2 oz. ground cloves
• 1 small cucumber per mango
• 1 long white pepper per mango
• Olive oil
• Worsted string
• Red pepper
• Brown sugar

Directions

1. Put mangoes into salt and water and soak for 9 days.
2. Cut mangoes and remove insides.
3. Put the mangoes in a kettle, cover with vinegar and water.
4. Add a lump of alum about the size of a hickory nut.
5. Put cabbage leaves around the mangoes.
6. Put mangoes on the stove to keep warm but not boil; keep them on the stove until green. 
7. Take 1 lb. ginger and crack it, but do not powder it fine.
8. Combine ginger, horse radish, garlic, black mustard seed, ground mace, and cloves. 
9. In each mango, put a small cucumber and long white pepper.
10. Mix stuffing with olive oil; fill mangoes and tie them with a worsted string. 
11. Pour boiling vinegar over them two or three times.
12. Put whole red pepper in each jar; fill the spaces with cucumbers. 
13. Put a little unmixed mustard and brown sugar in the top of each jar. 
14. Seal jars and put them away for a year or more.
15. This quantity of stuffing will fill thirty or forty mangoes. 

Source — Creole Cookery Book

Prepared by Gabbi Strickland
Louisiana Anthology
June 16, 2021