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Lemon Pickle

A preserved lemon mixture made 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

  1. Slice the lemons and rub them with salt.

Pickle and strain

  1. Layer the lemons in a stone jar with allspice, white pepper, mace, cloves, cayenne, horseradish, and mustard seed.

  2. Pour hot distilled vinegar over the mixture.

  3. Let it stand for a few days, then strain.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Allspice + horseradishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together654 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Lemon + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 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 sour, aromatic fruit that the vinegar brine preserves and flavours.
Distilled vinegar
Acidifies and preserves the lemons while extracting flavour from the spices.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the lemon slices and helps season and preserve them.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent, sharp heat that deepens as the pickle stands.

The step that matters

Let it stand for a few days, then strain. Time lets the acid and hot vinegar draw flavour from the spices and lemon into the liquid. Stopping early leaves the pickle weak and underdeveloped.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, allspice, mace, clove, horseradish, 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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