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Lemon Pickle

A pickled lemon preserved with salt, spices, 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

Prepare 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.

Make the 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 and stir daily for 6 weeks.

Strain and bottle

  1. After 6 weeks, 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. 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 bright, acidic flesh and peel that the pickle is built around.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the lemons and helps preserve them during the initial salting.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the lemons and gives the pickle its sharp, tangy character.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma and savoury depth that mellows during the long steeping.
Horseradish
Contributes sharp, pungent heat and aroma to the finished pickle.
Mustard seeds
Add a sharp, pungent flavour that infuses into the vinegar over the long steep.

The step that matters

Keeping the jar covered during the 6-week steep. Covering the jar limits evaporation and exposure to air, helping the vinegar keep its strength and the pickle stay sound over the long steep.

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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