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Pickled Lemons

Pickled lemons are lemons preserved in a brine of salt, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Pickled Lemons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe the lemons and cut each into eight pieces.

  2. Combine the lemons with salt, garlic, horseradish, cloves, mace, nutmeg, cayenne, and mustard flour in a large jar.

  3. Add the vinegar.

Heat

  1. Boil for 15 minutes in a well-tinned saucepan or in a strong jar placed in boiling water.

  2. Alternatively, set the jar on a hot hearth until done.

Age and bottle

  1. Let the jar sit for six weeks, keeping it covered.

  2. Stir the contents daily.

  3. Transfer the pickles into small bottles.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Garlic + horseradishtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together719 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Lemons
Provide the main pickled flesh and peel, with their sour juice flavouring the brine.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the lemons and helps preserve them during the long steep.
Vinegar
Acidifies the mixture, adding sharpness and helping to preserve the pickles.
Mustard flour
Adds a sharp, pungent heat that builds in flavour as the pickles age.

The step that matters

Heating the jar. Heating the sealed jar in boiling water or on a hot hearth helps the vinegar and spices extract flavour and aids preservation. Keeping the jar covered prevents the vinegar from evaporating and the contents from spoiling.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, clove, garlic, horseradish, nutmeg, mustard, flour):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, clove, garlic, horseradish, nutmeg, mustard, flour. 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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