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Lemon Pickle

A pickled lemon condiment made with lemons, salt, garlic, horseradish, spices, mustard flour, and vinegar, boiled and stored for six weeks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard 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 Pickle

Oven, in the book's wordsA very cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe the lemons and cut each into eight pieces.

  2. In a large bowl, combine the lemon pieces with salt, garlic, horseradish, cloves, mace, nutmeg, cayenne, and mustard flour.

  3. Pour the vinegar over the mixture and stir well.

Heat

  1. Boil the mixture for 15 minutes in a well‑tinned saucepan or in a strong jar placed in a kettle of boiling water.

  2. Alternatively, set the jar on a hot hearth until done.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Cover the jar and stir it daily for six weeks.

  2. After six weeks, transfer the pickle into small bottles.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  4. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 flavor of the pickle.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the lemons and preserves the pickle against spoilage.
Vinegar
Acidifies the mixture, adding sharpness and helping preserve it.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma and savory depth to the pickle.
Horseradish
Contributes sharp, pungent heat and aroma.
Mustard flour
Adds pungency and sharp flavor to the pickle.

The step that matters

Heating the mixture. Heating the lemons, salt, and vinegar softens the lemon pieces and helps the flavors and salt penetrate, while the vinegar's acidity keeps the pickle safe. Under-heating can leave the mixture underdeveloped, so the timing and temperature matter.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, clove, garlic, horseradish, nutmeg, pepper, mustard. 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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