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To Pickle Lemons

A preserved lemon dish made by salting, spicing, and vinegar brining.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Pickle Lemons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemons

  1. Cut lemons deeply from end to end in several places, but not quite through.

  2. Fill the incisions with coarse sea salt and place them upright in a dish.

  3. Leave them near the fire or in the sun for three weeks to dissolve the salt, repeating as necessary.

Pickle and cover

  1. After three weeks, place the lemons in a jar with mustard seed, bruised ginger, cloves, allspice, chilis, and turmeric.

  2. Boil vinegar and pour it over the lemons when it has cooled.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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 and rind, which soften and absorb salt and flavour during pickling.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the lemons and preserves them while the rind softens.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that preserves the lemons and gives the pickling liquid its sharp flavour.
Bruised ginger
Adds warm, pungent aroma that infuses through the lemons during pickling.

The step that matters

Salting and repeated turning over the three weeks. Salt must fully dissolve and penetrate the lemon flesh; if the salt stays in the incisions unevenly, parts of the lemon may spoil or stay bitter. Repeating the salting keeps the salt distributed and the preservation effective.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, ginger, clove, allspice, turmeric, vinegar):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Mangofits about as well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, ginger, clove, allspice, turmeric, 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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