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Lemon Mangoes

Pickled lemons soaked in brine, filled with spices, and preserved in vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 the rinds

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

  2. After three days, change the brine.

  3. Soak the rinds for three more days.

  4. Drain the rinds.

Fill and pickle

  1. Fill the rinds with mustard seed, chilies, horseradish, shallots, and ginger.

  2. Sew the cut pieces back onto the lemons.

  3. Place the lemons in a stone jar.

  4. Pour boiling pickle made from their 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 fruit shell and juice that form the pickle's sour base.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the rinds and seasons them during the brining stage.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour to the filling inside the rinds.
Vinegar
Adds acidity to the boiling pickle that preserves and sharpens the lemons.
Ginger
Adds warm, aromatic spice to both the filling and the pickle liquid.

The step that matters

Changing the brine after three days. Salt draws moisture out of the rinds and the brine dilutes and weakens as it absorbs that liquid. Replacing it keeps the salt strong enough to cure the rinds evenly and firm their texture.

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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