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Lemon Pickle

A pickled lemon preserved with salt, spices, vinegar, and mustard flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Lemon Pickle

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the lemons

  1. Pare the lemons thinly, ensuring no white is visible, and cut off both ends.

  2. Rub the lemons with as much salt as they can hold, inside and out.

  3. Cover the lemons with salt and let them sit for 3 to 4 days.

  4. Dry the lemons in a 300°F (150°C) oven until moisture is gone.

Prepare the garlic and horseradish

  1. Dry 12 cloves of garlic and a large handful of scraped horseradish until hard but not burned.

Make the pickling liquid

  1. In a pot, boil the vinegar, mace, cloves, nutmeg, and cayenne pepper together.

  2. Once cooled, stir in the mustard flour and pour over the dried lemons, garlic, and horseradish.

Steep and use

  1. Shake the mixture daily for two weeks.

  2. When using the lemons, shred them small and shake the liquid before adding to sauces.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 citrus flavor of the pickle.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the lemons and firms their peel before drying.
Vinegar
Acidic liquid that preserves the lemons and carries the flavors of the spices.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that mellows and deepens as it dries and steeps.
Horseradish
Contributes sharp, pungent heat that is volatile and fades somewhat with drying.
Mustard flour
Adds pungency and sharpness to the liquid and helps emulsify its flavors.

The step that matters

Drying the lemons in the oven. Drying must remove moisture until the lemons are firm, but too much heat can scorch the peel and make it bitter. Low heat slowly concentrates flavor while keeping the lemons pliable enough to shred later.

Swap the mace

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

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

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