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Lemon Pickle

A pickled lemon prepared by rubbing lemons, salting, and cooking with vinegar, pepper, and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the lemons

  1. Rub the lemons with a piece of flannel.

  2. Slit the lemons into quarters, but not all the way through.

  3. Fill the slits with pressed coarse sea salt.

  4. Stand the lemons upright in a pan for 4-5 days until the salt melts.

  5. Turn the lemons every 3 days until they become tender in their liquid.

Make and add the pickle

  1. Make a pickle by boiling ripe vinegar, the brine from the lemons, Jamaica pepper, and ginger.

  2. Skim the mixture and let it cool.

  3. Pour the cooled pickle over the lemons.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Vinegar + gingertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,126 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Small lemons with thick rinds
Provide the fruit that softens in its own brine and forms the base of the pickle.
Coarse sea salt
Draws juice out of the lemons and preserves them as the salt slowly dissolves.
Ripe vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the pickle and helps preserve the lemons.
Jamaica pepper
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the pickling liquid.
Ginger
Adds a sharp, aromatic bite to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Turning the lemons every 3 days. The salt must dissolve evenly and the lemons must soften in their own liquid. Skipping turns can leave some lemons under-brined and unevenly tender, which risks spoilage.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, vinegar, pepper):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, vinegar, pepper. 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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