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Lemon Mangoes

A pickled lemon recipe using brine, spices, and a boiling pickle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 and scoop out the pulp and skin with a teaspoon.

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

Brine

  1. Soak the rinds in a brine made of ½ pound of salt and 2 quarts of water for 6 days, changing the brine after 3 days.

Fill and pickle

  1. Drain the rinds and fill them with mustard seeds, chilies, horseradish, shallots, and ginger.

  2. Sew the cut pieces back on, place the lemons in a stone jar.

  3. Pour boiling pickle made from the lemon juice, vinegar, 1 tablespoon of salt, ginger, white peppercorns, and mace over the lemons.

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 edible case, and their juice becomes part of the pickling liquid.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the rinds during the long brine soak.
Vinegar
Adds acidity to the pickle, helping preserve the lemons and sharpen their flavour.
Mustard seeds
Add a pungent, sharp flavour that stands up to the sour lemon rinds.

The step that matters

Soak the rinds in the brine for the full 6 days. Salt slowly draws moisture and bitterness out of the rinds and seasons them through. Changing the brine after 3 days keeps the salt strong enough to do this work, so a shortened soak leaves the rinds harsh and under-seasoned.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

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