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Lemon Pickle

A pickled lemon preserved with salt, garlic, horseradish, spices, mustard seeds, and vinegar.

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

Salt the lemons

  1. Peel the lemons and cut them into quarters.

  2. Lay the quarters on a dish and sprinkle with salt, turning them daily for a week.

  3. Transfer the lemons to a stone jar.

Pickle

  1. Add garlic, horseradish, cloves, mace, nutmeg, cayenne, mustard seeds, and vinegar to the jar.

  2. Cover the jar and place it in a pan of boiling water; boil for 10 minutes.

  3. Set the jar in a warm place to simmer gently for 2 hours.

  4. Keep the jar covered, stirring daily for 6 weeks.

  5. Once settled, strain the mixture and bottle it for use.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Garlic + horseradishtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together719 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lemons
Provide the main flavour and acidity that the pickle is built around.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the lemons and softens them while seasoning them.
Vinegar
Acidic liquid that preserves the lemons and keeps the pickle sharp.
Garlic
Adds pungent, savoury aroma that mellows during the long pickling period.
Horseradish
Contributes sharp heat and pungency that mellows as the pickle matures.
Mustard seeds
Add a sharp, slightly bitter note and aroma to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Salting the lemons for a week. Turning the quarters daily keeps the salt in even contact so moisture is drawn out uniformly. Uneven salting can leave some pieces too salty or too firm to soften properly in the jar.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

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