Name: Lemon Ficklb
Ingredients: small lemons with thick rinds; coarse sea salt; ripe vinegar; brine from the lemons; Jamaica pepper; ginger

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Lemon Ficklb

Ingredients

Directions

Rub the lemons with a piece of flannel.
Slit the lemons into quarters, but do not cut through the pulp.
Fill the slits with pressed coarse sea salt.
Place the lemons in a pan for four to five days until the salt melts.
Soak the lemons for three more days until they become tender in their liquid.
Make enough pickle to cover the lemons using ripe vinegar, the brine from the lemons, Jamaica pepper, and ginger.
Boil the mixture and skim off any foam.
Pour the pickle over the lemons when ready.

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.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,154 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,800 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,814 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Vinegar + gingertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,126 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).