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Lemon Pickle

A preserved lemon dish made with salt, vinegar, spices, and ginger, left to mature for up to a year.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Lemon Pickle

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the lemons

  1. Rasp the lemons slightly and nick one end of each lemon.

  2. Place the lemons in a dish with coarse sea salt and cover them.

  3. Let the lemons sit near the fire for 7 to 8 days, then replace with fresh salt and let sit for the same time.

  4. Whenever the salt becomes damp, remove and dry it.

Pickle in vinegar

  1. Wash the lemons well and pour boiling vinegar over them.

  2. Add grated nutmeg, mace, and whole pepper to the vinegar.

  3. The lemons will take nearly a year to become tender.

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 + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Lemons
Provide the main flavour and the rind that softens during the long pickling.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the lemons and preserves them during the initial salting.
Boiling vinegar
Acidity that preserves the lemons and carries the pickling spices.
White mustard-seed
Adds pungency and sharp flavour to the pickling liquid.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and lemon.

The step that matters

Replacing the salt and drying it when damp. Salt draws water out of the lemons and dissolves into that liquid, so it weakens and turns damp. Damp salt loses its preserving effect, so it must be replaced or dried in time to keep the lemons from spoiling.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, vinegar, mustard, ginger, celery, pepper, sugar):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, vinegar, mustard, ginger, celery, pepper, sugar. 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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