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To Pickle Lemons with the Peel on

A method for pickling whole lemons with peel using a brine and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish 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 ↓

To Pickle Lemons with the Peel on

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemons

  1. Prepare a brine that will float an egg and soak the lemons in it for 6 days, stirring daily.

  2. Boil the lemons in 2 quarts of boiling water for 15 minutes.

  3. Remove the lemons and let them dry completely in a cloth.

Pickle and store

  1. Boil enough vinegar to cover the lemons with all the spices listed.

  2. Pack the lemons in a jar and pour the hot vinegar over them.

  3. Seal the jar tightly and store for about 12 months before using.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Clove + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Lemons
Provide the main fruit, whose flesh and peel soften and absorb the pickling flavours.
Vinegar
Acts as the pickling liquid, adding acidity that preserves the lemons and sharpens their flavour.
Cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice flavour to the pickling vinegar.
Mustard seed
Contributes a pungent, sharp aroma that develops as the lemons mature in the vinegar.

The step that matters

Drying the lemons completely after boiling. Any water left on the lemons dilutes the hot vinegar and can encourage spoilage during long storage, so they must be fully dry before packing.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, vinegar, clove, ginger, mace, mustard, horseradish. 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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