Name: Lemon Pickle
Ingredients: ½ ounce of minced; ¼ ounce of finely ground cloves; ½ ounce of nutmeg, sliced thin; 2 ounces of peeled garlic; ¼ pound of bruised mustard seed, tied in a muslin bag; 1 quart of boiling white wine vinegar

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

½ ounce of minced
¼ ounce of finely ground cloves
½ ounce of nutmeg, sliced thin
2 ounces of peeled garlic
¼ pound of bruised mustard seed, tied in a muslin bag
1 quart of boiling white wine vinegar

Directions

Dry the peels gradually by the fire until all the juice is gone.
Place the dried peels in a stone jar.
Add the minced, cloves, nutmeg, garlic, and mustard seed bag.
Pour the boiling vinegar over the mixture and seal the jar tightly.
Let it stand by the fire for 5-6 days, shaking it daily.
After 3 months, strain the mixture through a fine sieve to extract the liquid.
Let the liquid settle for 3-4 days, then pour off the clear liquid.
Repeat until all the clear liquid is separated.

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.

Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,686 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Garlic + mustardtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together4,053 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Clove + mustardtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,829 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Nutmeg + mustardtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,019 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

Swap the nutmeg

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

Tarragonfits better
Thymefits better
Allspicefits better
Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, garlic, mustard, white wine, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.