Skip to main content
Drink

Pickled Lemons

A pickled lemon preparation with horseradish, mustard flour, vinegar, salt, garlic, cloves, mace, nutmeg, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Goff, May Perrin, [from old catalog] ed · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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. Wash six lemons.

  2. Cut each lemon into eight pieces.

  3. Place a pound of salt on the pieces.

  4. Add six large cloves of garlic.

  5. Add two ounces of horseradish, sliced thin.

  6. Add cloves, mace, nutmeg, and cayenne, a quarter of an ounce each.

  7. Add two ounces of flour of mustard.

  8. Add two quarts of vinegar.

Heat

  1. Boil for a quarter of an hour in a well-tinned saucepan.

  2. Alternatively, boil in a strong jar in a kettle of boiling water.

  3. Alternatively, set the jar on the hot hearth until done.

Steep and bottle

  1. Set the jar aside and stir daily for six weeks.

  2. Keep the jar close covered.

  3. Put pickles into small bottles.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

502Calories
14 gProtein
3 gFat
104 gCarbs

Counts 9 of 11 ingredients. The other 2 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 9 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12
Clove1 tsp ground (2g)7
Cayenne1 tsp (1.8g)6
Garlic1 clove (3g)4
Mustard1 tsp (5g) yellow3
Vinegar1 tbsp (15ml) distilled3
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Horseradishnot in our table0
Macenot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Goff, May Perrin, [from old catalog] ed. 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. See the original page.

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. Horseradish + garlictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together719 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Mustard + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Horseradish + clovetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Lemons
Provide the sour, aromatic pickled flesh and peel that form the dish.
Vinegar
Acidifies the liquid, preserving the lemons and giving them their sharp flavour.
Salt
Draws out moisture from the lemons and helps preserve the pickle.
Horseradish
Adds pungent heat that mellows as the pickle steeps.
Flour of mustard
Contributes sharp, pungent flavour and body to the pickling liquor.

The step that matters

Heating the vinegar mixture. Boiling the vinegar with the spices and lemons extracts their flavour and helps the mixture stay preserved. Under-heating may leave the pickle less stable, so the stated method should be followed closely.

Swap the mace

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

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

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

More pickled lemons recipes

and Limes 6 See all 65 →

You might also like

Raspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesLemon WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesSugar VinegarSugar Vinegar20 recipes