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Lemon Mangoes

A pickled lemon recipe with mustard seed, chilies, horseradish, shallots, ginger, and spices.

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 of rind from the blossom end of each lemon.

  2. Scoop out the pulp and skin using a teaspoon handle. Rinse the insides until the water runs clear.

Brine

  1. Soak the lemons in brine made with ½ pound salt and 2 quarts water for 6 days, changing the brine after 3 days.

Fill and pickle

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

  2. Sew the cut pieces back on the lemons.

  3. Place the lemons in a stone jar.

  4. Pour boiling pickle made from 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 main body and acidic juice that the pickle is built around.
Sea salt
Draws water out of the lemons and seasons them during the long brine soak.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and tang to the pickling liquid that preserves the lemons.
Vinegar
Adds further acidity to the pickle, helping to preserve and sharpen the flavour.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour that infuses the lemons as they pickle.

The step that matters

Six-day brine soak. The brine must fully penetrate the rind and pulp so the lemons soften and season evenly. Changing the brine after three days keeps the salt strong enough to work through the fruit.

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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