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Lemon Pickle

A preserved lemon condiment made by pickling lemons with salt, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Lemon Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe the lemons and cut each into eight pieces.

  2. Combine the lemons, salt, garlic, horseradish, cloves, mace, nutmeg, Cayenne pepper, and mustard flour in a large jar.

Heat and macerate

  1. Pour in the vinegar and boil for 15 minutes in a well-tinned saucepan or in a strong jar placed in boiling water.

  2. Alternatively, set the jar on a hot hearth until done.

  3. Cover the jar and stir it daily for six weeks.

Bottle

  1. After six weeks, transfer the pickle into small 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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Horse + radishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together529 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Lemons
Provide the main sour, acidic flavour and the bulk of the pickle.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the lemons and helps preserve the pickle.
Vinegar
Acts as the liquid base and preservative, giving the pickle its sharp acidity.
Horseradish (in the method)
Adds pungent heat and sharpness that mellows during the long steeping.
Mustard flour
Adds sharp, pungent bite and helps thicken the pickle's flavour.

The step that matters

Boiling or heating the vinegar mixture. The jar must be heated thoroughly so the vinegar and acid penetrate the lemons and preserve the pickle. Under-heating leaves the contents vulnerable to spoilage during the long steep.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, clove, garlic, horse, radish, nutmeg, pepper. 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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