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Lemon Mangoes

A pickled lemon recipe using salt, water, mustard seed, chilies, horseradish, shallots, ginger, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish 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 Mangoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemons

  1. Cut a circular piece from the blossom end of each lemon, about the size of a shilling.

  2. Scoop out all the pulp and skin using the handle of a teaspoon.

  3. Rinse the insides of the rinds until the water runs clear.

Brine

  1. Soak the rinds in a brine made with ½ pound of salt and 2 quarts of water, stirring often.

  2. After 3 days, change the brine.

  3. Soak for another 3 days.

  4. Drain the rinds on a sieve.

Fill and pickle

  1. Fill the rinds with mustard seed, chilies, horseradish, shallots, and ginger.

  2. Sew the cut pieces back onto the lemons.

  3. Place the lemons in a stone jar.

  4. Pour boiling pickle made from their juice, vinegar, salt, ginger, white peppercorns, and mace over them.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mustard + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Horseradish + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 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 rinds form the container, and their juice forms the base of the pickling liquid.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the rinds during brining and seasons them through.
Lemon juice
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
Vinegar
Adds further acidity to the pickling liquid, helping to preserve the lemons.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour that penetrates the softened rinds.

The step that matters

Soaking in the brine. Salt draws water out of the rind and softens it while seasoning it. Changing the brine partway through keeps the salt strong enough to work and removes liquid drawn from the lemons, so the rinds stay firm and preserve well.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, mustard, horseradish, shallot, ginger, vinegar):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, mustard, horseradish, shallot, ginger, 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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