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Lemon Pickle

A pickled lemon dish preserved in vinegar and 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemons

  1. Grate the outer rinds of the lemons very thin.

  2. Cut the grated rinds into quarters, leaving the bottoms whole.

  3. Rub each lemon with ½ pound of coarse sea salt and spread them on a large dish.

  4. Let the lemons dry gradually by the fire until the juice is absorbed into the peels.

Steep and pickle

  1. Place the dried lemons in a glazed pitcher with mace, cloves, nutmeg, garlic, and mustard‑seed in a muslin bag.

  2. Pour 2 quarts of boiling white‑wine vinegar over the lemons.

  3. Seal the pitcher and let it stand by the fire for 5‑6 days, shaking daily.

Strain and bottle

  1. After 3 months, strain the mixture through a fine sieve, pressing out the liquid.

  2. Let the liquid stand until clear, then bottle it.

  3. Boil 1 pint of vinegar and add it to the jar with the ingredients.

  4. Let it stand by the fire for several days before bottling.

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 main flavour and the peel that is pickled in the vinegar.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the lemons, concentrating their flavour and helping preserve them.
White-wine vinegar
Acts as the pickling liquid that preserves the lemons and gives them their sharp acidity.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that mellows and deepens during the long steeping.
Mustard-seed
Contributes sharp, pungent flavour that infuses into the vinegar.

The step that matters

Drying the salted lemons by the fire. Salt must draw moisture out of the peel gradually; if the lemons dry too fast or unevenly, the salt may not penetrate and the texture and preservation suffer.

Swap the mace

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

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

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