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To Pickle Lemons

A method of preserving lemons by salting, sun-drying, and then submerging them in a vinegar-based pickle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,776 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

To Pickle Lemons

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the lemons

  1. Scrape the lemons with a piece of broken glass.

  2. Score them lengthwise in quarters without cutting through the skins.

  3. Lay them in a large earthen dish without allowing them to touch each other.

  4. Cover the lemons with coarse sea salt and place them in the sun.

  5. Add more salt as needed to keep them covered.

  6. Turn the lemons every day for three weeks.

Make the pickle and jar

  1. After three weeks, remove them from the salt and place them in a jar.

  2. Make a pickle by boiling vinegar with bruised mustard seed, ginger, and long pepper, then let it cool.

  3. Stir in a very small quantity of turmeric and pour it over the lemons.

  4. Keep the jar closely covered.

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. Ginger + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Lemon + turmerictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,192 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 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 fruit that is softened and flavoured through salting and pickling.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the lemons and preserves them while they cure.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that preserves the lemons and sharpens the pickle's flavour.
Bruised mustard seed
Adds pungent, sharp flavour to the pickling liquid.
Turmeric
Adds colour and a mild earthy flavour to the pickle.

The step that matters

Keeping the lemons fully covered in salt. Salt draws out moisture and preserves the fruit; any lemon left uncovered can spoil or mould. Adding more salt as needed keeps the curing even.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, vinegar, ginger, pepper, turmeric):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Broccolifits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, vinegar, ginger, pepper, turmeric. 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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