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Dessert

Lemon Pickle

A pickled lemon preserves made by sun‑drying lemons with spices and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Lemon Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemons

  1. Grate the yellow rind from the lemons and quarter them, leaving them whole at the bottom.

  2. Sprinkle salt on the lemons and place them in the sun daily until dry.

  3. Brush off any soot and place the lemons in a pot with nutmeg, mace, horseradish, garlic, and mustard seed.

Pickle and bottle

  1. Pour the strong vinegar over the mixture, tie the pot closed, and place a board on top.

  2. Let it stand for three months, then strain it until clear and bottle it.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lemons
Provide the main body of the pickle, with acidity and aromatic citrus oil from the rind.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the lemons as they dry, concentrating their flavour.
Garlic
Adds pungent flavour that mellows during the long steeping.
Mustard seed
Contributes sharp, pungent flavour to the pickling liquid.
Strong vinegar
Acts as the preserving liquid, adding acidity that keeps the pickle stable.

The step that matters

Drying the lemons in the sun. Salting and drying draw out moisture so the lemons stay firm and concentrate flavour. Brushing off soot before pickling keeps off-flavours and dirt out of the finished pickle.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, nutmeg, horseradish, clove, 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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