Skip to main content
Drink

Vinegar Lime Pickle

A pickle of small limes, ginger, garlic, chillies, mustard seed, and salt preserved in vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lime and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,621 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Vinegar Lime Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and peel the limes.

  2. Combine limes, green ginger, garlic, green chillies, mustard seed, and salt in open-mouthed bottles.

Pickle

  1. Pour enough vinegar over the ingredients to cover them.

  2. Place the bottles in the sun for a few days until ready to use.

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. Lime + gingertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,621 recipes

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

  2. Garlic + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Ginger + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

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

  4. Lime + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together392 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Lime + garlictop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,411 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

Limes
Form the bulk of the pickle, giving sour citrus flavour and aroma.
Good vinegar
Covers the ingredients with sharp acidity that brightens flavour and helps keep them preserved.
Mustard seed
Pounded seeds add a sharp, pungent flavour.
Green chillies
Add heat to the pickle.
Green ginger
Adds a fresh, warm aroma.
Garlic
Adds a pungent, savoury aroma.

The step that matters

Covering the ingredients with vinegar. Vinegar must fully cover the limes and spices so no part is exposed to air. Submerged in acid, the ingredients are protected from spoilage microbes while the flavours slowly mellow.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Corianderfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lime, 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.

You might also like

Raspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesGinger PopGinger Pop22 recipesSugar VinegarSugar Vinegar20 recipesGinger WineGinger Wine12 recipes