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Pickled Lemons

A preserved lemon mixture of lemons, salt, spices, and vinegar, boiled and left to mature for weeks.

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 clean.

  2. In a large jar, layer the lemons with salt, garlic, horseradish, cloves, mace, nutmeg, cayenne, and mustard powder.

  3. Pour the vinegar over the mixture.

Cook and pickle

  1. Boil the mixture for 1 hour.

  2. Set the jar aside and stir it daily for 6 weeks.

  3. Keep the jar closed during the pickling process.

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
Provide the fruit that softens and becomes tender and tangy during pickling.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the lemons and sharpens the flavour of the pickle.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the lemons and helps preserve them.
Horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent heat that mellows as the pickle matures.
Mustard powder
Adds pungency and sharpness to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Keep the jar closed during pickling. Sealing the jar keeps the vinegar brine concentrated and prevents spoilage and loss of aroma while the lemons slowly soften and flavour develops over weeks.

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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