Name: To Pickle Lemons, and Limes
Ingredients: 8 lemons; coarse sea salt; 2 quarts white wine vinegar; ½ pound ginger, slightly bruised; 2 ounces whole black pepper; ½ pound mustard seed; 6 capsicums (or a few chilies); 1 small head of garlic, divided into cloves and peeled; 12 small onions, stuck with 24 cloves

Why it works: Pepper and capsicum match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,571 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Pickle Lemons, and Limes

Oven, in the book's wordsA very cool oven

Ingredients

8 lemons
coarse sea salt
2 quarts white wine vinegar
½ pound ginger, slightly bruised
2 ounces whole black pepper
½ pound mustard seed
6 capsicums (or a few chilies)
1 small head of garlic, divided into cloves and peeled
12 small onions, stuck with 24 cloves

Directions

Salt the lemons

Wipe the lemons clean.
Make four deep incisions in each lemon, from the stalk to the blossom end, without dividing the fruit.
Stuff the lemons with salt.
Place the salted lemons in a deep dish in a sunny spot.
Turn and baste the lemons with their own juice for 7 to 10 days.
Rub the lemons with turmeric.

Pickle and store

Place the lemons in a stone jar with garlic and onions.
Boil the vinegar, ginger, black pepper, and mustard seed together.
Pour the hot mixture over the lemons.
Cover the jar with a plate and let it sit overnight.
Add the capsicums.
Seal the jar with a skin and thick paper.
Store the pickles covered with vinegar; they will last for seven years.

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.

Pepper + capsicumtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,571 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,154 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Mustard + garlictop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together4,053 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Ginger + garlictop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,402 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 whose juice and peel soften and flavour the pickle as it cures.
Coarse sea salt: Draws water and juice out of the fruit and helps preserve the lemons.
White wine vinegar: Adds acidity that preserves the lemons and keeps the pickle tangy.
Garlic: Adds pungent aroma that mellows during the long pickling.
Mustard seed: Adds sharp, pungent flavour that infuses into the vinegar.
Ginger: Adds warm, aromatic bite that infuses into the hot vinegar.

The step that matters

Keep the lemons submerged in vinegar. Exposed fruit can spoil and grow mould, while lemons fully covered by the acidic vinegar stay preserved and keep curing evenly over time.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, white wine, vinegar, pepper, mustard, capsicum, garlic):

Tarragonfits better
Thymefits better
Parsleyfits better
Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, white wine, vinegar, pepper, mustard, capsicum, garlic. 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.

More pickled lemons recipes

and Limes 6 See all 65 →

Lemon Wine31 recipes

Ginger Wine12 recipes

Raspberry Vinegar214 recipes

Wine Whey111 recipes

Like knowing why a recipe works?

The free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.

Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.

To Pickle Lemons, and Limes