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Dessert

Lemon Mangoes

A pickled lemon recipe using brine, mustard seeds, chilies, horseradish, shallots, ginger, vinegar, salt, white peppercorns, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish 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 Mangoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemons

  1. Cut a circular piece from the blossom end of each lemon, about the size of a shilling.

  2. Scoop out all the pulp and skin using the handle of a teaspoon.

  3. Rinse the insides of the rinds until the water runs clear.

Brine

  1. Soak the rinds in a brine made with ½ pound of salt and 2 quarts of water, stirring often.

  2. After 3 days, change the brine and soak for another 3 days.

Fill and pickle

  1. Drain the rinds and fill them with mustard seeds, chilies, horseradish, shallots, and ginger.

  2. Sew the cut pieces back on the lemons.

  3. Place the lemons in a stone jar and pour boiling pickle made from their juice, vinegar, salt, ginger, white peppercorns, and mace over them.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mustard + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Horseradish + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Lemon + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lemons
Provide the rinds that are hollowed out and filled, and the juice that makes up the pickle.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the rinds during brining, firming them and seasoning the lemons.
Vinegar
Adds acidity to the pickling liquid, helping preserve the lemons and sharpening their flavour.
Mustard seeds
Add a pungent, slightly bitter flavour to the filling inside the lemons.

The step that matters

Changing the brine after 3 days. The first brine soaks up the lemons' bitterness and salt is what preserves them, so a fresh brine is needed to keep the rinds firm and to keep the pickle from spoiling. Keeping the brine strong and renewing it as the record says matters for a safe, well-seasoned result.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, mustard, horseradish, shallot, ginger, vinegar):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, mustard, horseradish, shallot, ginger, 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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