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Lemon Pickle

A pickled lemon preserved with 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 ↓

Lemon Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemons

  1. Peel the lemons and cut them into quarters.

  2. Place them on a dish and sprinkle with salt, turning them daily for a week.

  3. Transfer the lemons to a stone jar.

Add the spices and vinegar

  1. Add garlic, horseradish, cloves, mace, nutmeg, cayenne, mustard seeds, and vinegar.

Heat and steep

  1. Cover the jar and place it in a pan of boiling water; boil for 10 minutes.

  2. Set the jar in a gentle simmer for 2 hours.

  3. Keep the jar covered, stirring daily for 6 weeks.

  4. Once settled, strain and bottle for use.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Lemons
Provide the main acidic, aromatic flavour base of the pickle.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the lemons and helps preserve them.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the lemons and carries the flavours.
Mustard seeds
Add pungency and a sharp, slightly bitter background flavour.
Horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent heat that mellows during long steeping.

The step that matters

Turning the lemons in salt for a week. Salt must coat and draw moisture from the lemons evenly; turning them daily keeps every surface in contact with salt so the fruit softens and cures uniformly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

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