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Dessert

Lemon Pickle

A preserved pickle made with lemons, salt, garlic, horseradish, spices, mustard flour, and vinegar, stored for six weeks.

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. Cut each lemon into eight pieces.

  2. Combine lemons, salt, garlic, horseradish, cloves, mace, nutmeg, cayenne, mustard flour, and vinegar in a pot.

Cook and rest

  1. Boil for 15 minutes in a well-tinned saucepan or in a strong jar in boiling water.

  2. Set the jar aside and stir daily for 6 weeks, keeping it tightly covered.

  3. After 6 weeks, transfer to small bottles.

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 fruit body and sharp acidity that defines the pickle.
Salt
Draws moisture out of the lemons and helps preserve the mixture over the long rest.
Vinegar
Acidic liquid that preserves the pickle and softens the lemon and horseradish.
Horseradish
Supplies a sharp, pungent heat that mellows during the long steeping.
Garlic
Adds pungent savoury flavour that deepens over the weeks of rest.
Mustard flour
Adds sharp, pungent mustard flavour and some heat to the pickle.

The step that matters

Stir daily for 6 weeks with the jar tightly covered. Regular stirring keeps the lemon pieces evenly submerged in the acidic brine so flavours blend and no part spoils. A tight cover limits air exposure, slowing oxidation and contamination during the long steep.

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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