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Lemon Mangoes

A pickled lemon recipe with mustard seed, chilies, horseradish, shallots, ginger, vinegar, peppercorns, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 of rind from the blossom end of each lemon.

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

  3. Rinse the insides until the water runs clear.

Brine

  1. Soak the lemons in a brine made with ½ pound of salt and 2 quarts of water for 3 days, stirring often.

  2. Change the brine.

  3. Soak for 3 more days.

  4. Drain the lemons.

Fill and pickle

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

  2. Sew the cut pieces back on the lemons.

  3. Place the lemons in a stone jar.

  4. Pour boiling pickle made from their juice, vinegar, salt, ginger, 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
Provide the main body and sour acidity, with rind and juice flavouring the pickle.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the lemons and seasons them during the long brine soak.
Vinegar
Adds acidity to the pickling liquid, preserving the lemons and sharpening their flavour.
Mustard seed
Contributes a sharp, pungent flavour to the filling as the lemons pickle.
Horseradish
Adds a sharp, pungent heat that mellows as the lemons pickle.

The step that matters

Rinsing the insides until the water runs clear. Leftover pulp and pith left inside the lemons can taste bitter and spoil the pickle, so thorough rinsing keeps the flavour clean.

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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