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Pickled Lemons

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

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. In a large bowl, combine the lemon pieces with salt, garlic, horseradish, cloves, mace, nutmeg, cayenne, and mustard powder.

  3. Add the vinegar and mix well.

Heat

  1. Boil the mixture in a well-tinned saucepan for 15 minutes, or in a strong jar placed in a kettle of boiling water.

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

Pickle and bottle

  1. Cover the jar and stir daily for six weeks.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Lemons
Supply the main fruit flesh and peel that soften and absorb the pickling liquid.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the lemons and preserves the mixture against spoilage.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickles and sharpens their flavour.
Mustard powder
Adds pungent flavour and helps preserve the mixture's sharp character.
Horseradish
Contributes a sharp, pungent heat that mellows during the long pickling time.

The step that matters

Heating the mixture. Heating the mixture in a sealed, well-tinned pan or a jar in boiling water ensures the vinegar and spices are fully combined and the pickle is safely heated. Keeping the jar sealed while it sits prevents loss of aroma and moisture.

Swap the mace

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

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

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