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Lemon Pickle

A preserved lemon pickle made with salt, garlic, horseradish, spices, mustard flour, and vinegar, cured for six weeks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard 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 Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

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

  2. Sprinkle the salt, garlic, horseradish, cloves, mace, nutmeg, cayenne, and mustard flour over the lemons.

  3. Pour the vinegar over the mixture.

Cook and store

  1. Boil for 15 minutes in a well-tinned saucepan or in a jar in boiling water.

  2. Set aside and stir daily for six weeks, keeping the jar covered.

  3. Transfer to small bottles for storage.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  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 body and acidic citrus flavour of the pickle.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the lemons and helps preserve the mixture.
Vinegar
Acidifies the mixture, preserving it and sharpening the overall flavour.
Horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent heat that mellows during the long resting period.
Mustard flour
Contributes pungency and sharpness to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Stirring daily for six weeks with the jar covered. Regular stirring distributes salt, acid and spices evenly through the lemons as they soften and flavours develop. Keeping the jar covered limits contamination and evaporation during the long rest.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, clove, garlic, horseradish, nutmeg, 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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