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To Pickle Lemons, No. 2

A method for pickling lemons in a salt and vinegar brine with pepper, ginger, and mustard seed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Pickle Lemons, No. 2

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemons

  1. Select thick-skinned lemons and rub them with a flannel.

  2. Slit each lemon into four quarters without cutting through the pulp.

  3. Fill the slits with coarse sea salt and set the lemons upright in a pan.

Cure

  1. Allow the salt to melt, turning the lemons daily in the liquid produced until tender.

Pickle and serve

  1. Make a pickle by combining vinegar with the brine, black pepper, ginger, and mustard seed.

  2. Boil the mixture, skim it, and let it cool before pouring it 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Lemons
Thick skins and pulp provide the main body and acidic flavour of the preserve.
Coarse sea salt
Draws juice out of the lemons and preserves them through salt curing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that helps preserve the lemons and sharpens the pickling liquid.
Ginger
Adds warm, aromatic spice to the pickling liquid.
Mustard seed
Adds a pungent, aromatic note to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Allow the salt to melt and turn the lemons daily until tender. Salt must draw out enough juice to soften the rind fully; turning exposes all surfaces to the brine so the lemons cure evenly rather than unevenly or spoiling at the top.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, vinegar, 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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