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Lemon Ketchup, or Pickle

A preserved lemon condiment made by roasting lemons, then steeping them in a vinegar and spice mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Lemon Ketchup, or Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemons

  1. Cut the tops off the lemons and stuff them with coarse sea salt.

  2. Set the lemons upright in a dish before the fire, turning them daily.

  3. When dry, roast the lemons in a Dutch oven until brown.

Pickle and bottle

  1. Boil the vinegar with anchovies, mace, nutmeg, and white pepper for 10 minutes.

  2. Pour the boiling mixture over the lemons in a stone jar and cover tightly.

  3. Let it stand for six weeks, then transfer to quarter-pint flat 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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Nutmeg + white peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Lemon + white peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,658 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Lemons
Their sour juice and aromatic peel form the base of the pickle.
Vinegar
Its acidity preserves the lemons and gives the pickle a sharp bite.
Anchovies
They dissolve into the hot vinegar, adding deep savory flavor.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice note.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm, sweet aroma to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Letting the pickle stand for six weeks. Over a long rest, the acid and salt slowly soften the lemon rind and flesh and let the flavors blend. Bottling early leaves the lemons sharp and underdeveloped.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, vinegar, mace, nutmeg):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, vinegar, mace, nutmeg. 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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