Skip to main content
Main

To PickLE Lemons with the Peel on

Lemons are pickled with spices and vinegar, then stored for months.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

To PickLE Lemons with the Peel on

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemons

  1. Prepare a brine that will float an egg and soak the lemons in it for 6 days, stirring daily.

  2. Boil the lemons in 2 quarts of boiling water for 15 minutes.

  3. Remove the lemons and let them dry on a cloth until cold.

Pickle and store

  1. Boil enough vinegar with the spices to cover the lemons.

  2. Pack the lemons in a jar and pour the hot vinegar over them.

  3. Seal the jar tightly and store for about 12 months before using.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  4. Horseradish + garlictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together719 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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 body and sour citrus flavour that the pickling liquid carries.
Vinegar
Acts as the pickling liquid that preserves the lemons and gives them their sharp acidity.
Cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice flavour to the pickling vinegar.
Mustard-seed
Adds pungent, sharp aroma to the spiced vinegar.

The step that matters

Seal the jar tightly and store for about 12 months. Vinegar and salt brine slowly soften the lemon peel and mellow the sharp acidity over time. A loose seal lets air in and can spoil the jar before the flavour has developed.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, clove, ginger, mace, mustard, horseradish, garlic):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, clove, ginger, mace, mustard, horseradish, 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.

More pickled lemons recipes

and Limes 6 See all 65 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesHorseradish SauceHorseradish Sauce17 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes