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To Tickle Lemons, and Limes

A pickled lemon and lime preserve made with salt, vinegar, spices, and garlic.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Turmeric and ginger 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 Tickle Lemons, and Limes

Oven, in the book's wordsA very cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemons

  1. Wipe the lemons clean and make four deep incisions in each, from stalk to blossom end, without cutting through.

  2. Stuff the lemons with salt and place them in a deep dish in a sunny spot for 7 to 10 days, turning and basting them with their own juice regularly.

  3. Rub the lemons with turmeric, if using, and place them in a stone jar with garlic and onions.

Make the pickling liquid

  1. Boil the vinegar with ginger, black pepper, and mustard seed, then pour it over the lemons.

Pack and store

  1. Cover the jar with a plate and let it sit overnight.

  2. The next day, add capsicums or chilies, then seal the jar with a skin and thick paper.

  3. Store the jar covered with vinegar; it will last for seven years if kept properly.

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. Turmeric + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Turmeric + clovetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,876 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Lemon + turmerictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,192 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 main flavor and tender, acidic peel that softens during pickling.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out juice from the lemons and helps preserve them.
White wine vinegar
Acidic liquid that preserves the lemons and carries the pickling flavors.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent, sharp flavor that infuses into the vinegar.
Ginger
Contributes warm, aromatic pungency to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Salting and sunning the lemons. The salt must be packed in fully so the lemons release their juice and soften. Turning and basting them keeps the salt and juice evenly distributed, so the fruit cures uniformly rather than spoiling in spots.

Swap the turmeric

The recipe marks turmeric as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, garlic, clove, onion, white wine, vinegar, ginger):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Turmericthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, garlic, clove, onion, white wine, vinegar, ginger. 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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