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Pickled Lemons

Pickled lemons are lemons preserved in a brine of salt, spices, and vinegar.

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 and cut each into eight pieces.

  2. Combine the lemons, salt, garlic, horseradish, cloves, mace, nutmeg, cayenne, and mustard powder in a large jar.

Heat the vinegar

  1. Add the vinegar and boil for 15 minutes in a well-tinned saucepan or in a strong jar placed in boiling water.

  2. Alternatively, set the jar on a hot hearth until done.

Pickle and bottle

  1. Let the jar sit, stirring daily for six weeks, keeping it covered.

  2. Transfer the pickles into small bottles.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Garlic + horseradishtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together719 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 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

Lemons
Provide the main pickled flesh and peel, with sourness that the brine softens over time.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the lemons and helps preserve them during the long pickling period.
Vinegar
Acidifies the mixture, preserving the lemons and giving the pickle its sharp flavour.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that mellows during the weeks of pickling.
Horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent heat that mellows as the pickle matures.
Mustard powder
Adds pungent flavour and a little heat to the brine.

The step that matters

Heating the vinegar with the spices. Boiling the vinegar helps extract flavour from the spices and reduces the risk of spoilage in the jar. Heating in a well-tinned pan or a jar set in boiling water keeps the brine clean and even.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, clove, garlic, horseradish, nutmeg, 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.

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