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Dessert

Lemon Pickle

A pickled lemon preserved in vinegar with ginger, pepper, mustard seed, and Jamaica pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Lemon Pickle

Oven, in the book's wordsA very cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the brine

  1. Boil vinegar with ginger, black pepper, mustard seed, and Jamaica pepper.

Pickle

  1. Pour boiling mixture over lemons in earthen jars.

  2. Cover jars with bladder when cool.

  3. Ensure lemons are submerged in vinegar, adding more as it evaporates.

  4. Let pickle sit for 12 months before using.

  5. Alternatively, bake lemons in a cool oven for 6-7 hours for quicker use.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Acts as the pickling liquid that preserves the lemons and carries the spice flavours into the fruit.
Lemons
Provide the main fruit, whose flesh and peel soften and take on sourness and flavour as they pickle.
Ginger
Adds warm, pungent aroma that infuses into the vinegar and the lemons.
Mustard seed
Contributes sharp, pungent flavour and aroma to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Keep the lemons submerged in vinegar. Lemons exposed above the liquid can spoil or mould, because air contact allows microbial growth. Topping up the vinegar as it evaporates keeps the fruit covered throughout the long pickling period.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper, mustard, lemon. 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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