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Lemon Pickle

A pickled lemon preserved in vinegar with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Lemon Pickle

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemons

  1. Grate the yellow rind off the lemons without disturbing the white part underneath.

  2. Remove the white part with a sharp knife and slice the lemons into pieces about 1¾ inches thick.

  3. Rub the lemon slices thoroughly with coarse sea salt.

  4. Place the salted slices on a dish to dry in a cool oven until the juice is absorbed.

Pickle

  1. Transfer the dried lemon slices to a jar.

  2. Pour vinegar over the lemon slices.

  3. Add mace, cloves, nutmeg, garlic, and mustard seed.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  4. Garlic + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Lemons
Provide the sour juice and rind that form the pickle's main flavour and body.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out lemon juice so the slices dry and firm up before pickling.
Vinegar
Acidic liquid that preserves the lemon slices and keeps them sharp in the jar.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma and savoury depth to the pickle.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent bite and a crunchy texture when crushed.

The step that matters

Drying the salted lemon slices. Salt draws juice out of the lemons; if they stay wet they dilute the vinegar and can spoil, so they must dry until the juice is absorbed before going into the jar.

Swap the mace

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

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

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