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Lemon Pickle

A preserved lemon mixture of lemons, spices, and vinegar, left to mature for six weeks.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and cut the lemons into 8 pieces each.

  2. Sprinkle the salt, garlic, horseradish, cloves, mace, nutmeg, Cayenne pepper, and mustard flour over the lemons.

  3. Pour 2 quarts of vinegar over the mixture.

Cook and cure

  1. Boil for 15 minutes in a well‑tinned saucepan or in a strong jar in boiling water.

  2. Set aside and stir daily for 6 weeks, keeping the jar covered.

  3. Transfer to small bottles for storage.

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. Horse + radishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together529 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  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 body and sharp citrus flavor that the pickle is built around.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the lemons and helps preserve the mixture during curing.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the lemons and gives the pickle its sharp, tangy character.
Mustard flour
Adds pungent, sharp heat that deepens the flavor of the pickle.
Horse-radish
Contributes sharp pungency that carries through the long curing period.

The step that matters

Boil for 15 minutes. Heating the lemons, spices and vinegar together helps extract flavor and kill surface microbes before the long cure. Use a well-tinned pan or a strong jar, since reactive or damaged metal can affect taste and safety.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, clove, garlic, horse, radish, 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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