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Lemon Mangoes

A pickled lemon recipe using brine, spices, and a vinegar-based pickle.

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 and scoop out the pulp and skin with a teaspoon.

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

Brine

  1. Soak the rinds in a brine made of ½ pound salt and 2 quarts water for 3 days, stirring often.

  2. Change the brine and soak for an additional 3 days.

Fill and pickle

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

  2. Sew the cut pieces back onto the lemons and place them in a stone jar.

  3. Pour boiling pickle made from the lemon juice, vinegar, salt, ginger, white peppercorns, and mace over the lemons.

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 edible rind that is salted, softened and filled to become the pickle.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the rinds and seasons them during the long brine soak.
Lemon juice
Supplies acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it a sharp, bright flavour.
Vinegar
Adds further acidity to the pickling liquid, helping to preserve the lemons.
Mustard seed
Adds a pungent, sharp flavour to the filling inside the rinds.

The step that matters

Changing the brine. The first brine soak draws out bitterness and moisture from the rinds, so a fresh brine for the second soak keeps the salt strength consistent and the rinds properly seasoned and firm.

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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