Skip to main content
Main

Pickled Lemons

Pickled lemons are lemons preserved in a vinegar and salt brine with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pickled Lemons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemons

  1. Rub the lemons with a piece of flannel.

  2. Slit each lemon halfway down into four quarters, but do not cut through to the pulp.

  3. Fill the slits with coarse sea salt, pressing it in hard.

Cure the lemons

  1. Set the lemons upright in a pan for 4 to 5 days until the salt melts.

  2. Turn the lemons three times a day in their own liquid until tender.

Make and add the pickle

  1. Make enough pickle to cover the lemons using rice vinegar, the brine from the lemons, allspice, and ginger.

  2. Boil and skim the pickle mixture, then let it cool.

  3. Once cool, pour the pickle over the lemons and add mustard seed and garlic.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lemons
Thick rind and flesh are cured slowly, becoming tender and deeply sour-salty.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out juice and preserves the lemons while the salt slowly softens the rind.
Rice vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the pickle and helps keep the lemons preserved.
Mustard seed
Contributes sharp, pungent flavor that complements the sour lemon.
Garlic
Adds savory aroma that mellows into the pickling liquid.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice notes to the pickle liquid.

The step that matters

Slit each lemon halfway, without cutting through. Cutting through to the pulp lets the lemon lose juice and dry out, and the salt cannot stay packed inside to cure it evenly.

Swap the garlic

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, vinegar, allspice, pepper, ginger, mustard, clove. 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.

More pickled lemons recipes

and Limes 6 See all 65 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes