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Lemon Pickle

A pickled lemon preserved in vinegar and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Lemon Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut each lemon into 6 pieces.

  2. Combine lemons with salt, garlic, mace, nutmeg, cayenne, allspice, and mustard flour.

Cook and cure

  1. Add vinegar and boil for 30 minutes.

  2. Transfer to a jar and stir daily for 8 weeks.

Bottle

  1. Pour into small bottles and seal tightly.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lemons
Provide the main body of the pickle and its sour, bright flavor.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the lemons and helps preserve the mixture.
Vinegar
Acidifies the mixture and extracts flavor from the lemons and spices.
Mustard flour
Adds pungent, sharp flavor and some body to the pickling liquid.
Garlic
Contributes pungent aroma and savory depth to the pickle.

The step that matters

Stir daily for 8 weeks. Regular stirring keeps the lemon pieces evenly submerged and distributes the salt, vinegar and spices through the mixture so the flavor develops uniformly during the long curing period.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, clove, garlic, nutmeg, pepper, allspice, 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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