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Pickled Lemons

A pickled lemon preparation using salt, oil, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pickled Lemons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemons

  1. Rub the lemons with a piece of flannel.

  2. Slit each lemon halfway down into four quarters, without cutting through to the pulp.

  3. Fill the slits with coarse sea salt, pressing it in hard.

  4. Set the lemons upright in a pan for 4 to 5 days until the salt melts.

  5. Turn the lemons three times a day in their own liquid until tender.

Make and add the pickle

  1. Make enough pickle to cover the lemons using rape oil, vinegar, brine, Jamaica pepper, and ginger.

  2. Boil and skim the pickle.

  3. When the pickle is cold, pour it over the lemons along with mustard seed and garlic.

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. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Mustard + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Lemons
Provide the main fruit flavour and the rind that softens during salting and turning.
Coarse sea salt
Draws liquid out of the lemons and softens the rind while preserving the fruit.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the pickle.
Rape oil
Forms the body of the pickle and carries the spice flavours over the lemons.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour to the pickle.

The step that matters

Turn the lemons until tender. Salt needs several days to draw out liquid and soften the rind evenly. Turning the lemons keeps them evenly coated in their own brine, so the rind softens throughout rather than only where it sits in liquid.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Mangofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper, ginger, mustard, clove, garlic. 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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