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Another Way to Make Lemon Pickle

A pickled lemon condiment made with salt, spices, vinegar, and mustard seeds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Another Way to Make Lemon Pickle

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemons

  1. Grate the outer rind of the lemons and divide them in half, leaving the bottom whole.

  2. Rub the lemons with the coarse sea salt and spread them on a large dish.

  3. Place the dish in a cool oven until the juice dries up.

Pickle

  1. Transfer the lemons to a stone jar and add cloves, mace, nutmeg, cayenne, garlic, and mustard seed.

  2. Pour boiling vinegar over the mixture, seal the jar, and let it stand for three months.

Strain and bottle

  1. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve, pressing well, and let it sit overnight.

  2. Pour off the clear liquid into small bottles and let the dregs sit covered for a few days.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  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 body and acidity of the pickle.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture from the lemons, concentrating flavour and helping preserve them.
Vinegar
Acts as the preserving liquid, adding sharp acidity that keeps the pickle stable.
Garlic
Adds pungent flavour that mellows during the long steeping.
Mustard seed
Contributes a sharp, pungent note to the infused liquid.

The step that matters

Drying the lemons in a cool oven. Lemons must be dried only until the juice evaporates; too much heat cooks the fruit and can spoil its texture. Gentle drying concentrates the salted fruit so it absorbs the spices and vinegar well, rather than becoming soggy or softened.

Swap the mace

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

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

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