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To Pickle Lemons

A method for pickling lemons with spices and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Pickle Lemons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemons

  1. Grate off the rind of the lemons and prick them.

  2. Place the lemons in a dish without touching each other and cover them with salt.

  3. Turn the lemons every day for a month.

  4. Wipe the lemons dry and let them air dry near the fire for 3 to 4 days.

Pack and pickle

  1. Tie the mace, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, white peppercorns, Jamaica long pepper, cayenne pods, and shallots in muslin bags.

  2. Put the lemons and the seasoning bags in well-glazed jars.

  3. Boil the vinegar and pour it hot over the lemons.

  4. Let the jars sit near the fire for a few days, shaking them gently each day.

  5. Check the jars in a few weeks to see if they need more vinegar.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Shallot + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Lemons
Provide the main fruit, whose salted and dried peel and flesh become the pickle.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the lemons and preserves them during the initial salting.
Good vinegar
Acts as the preserving liquid that covers the lemons and keeps them acidic and stable.
Ginger
Adds aroma and warmth to the pickling liquid through its bagged spice flavour.

The step that matters

Turning the lemons daily during the salting. Salt must reach every surface evenly and the lemons must not touch, so that moisture is drawn out uniformly and no spot stays unsalted and vulnerable to spoilage.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, nutmeg, clove, ginger, pepper, shallot, horseradish. 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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