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Dessert

Lemon Pickle

A pickled lemon peel preserved in sugar, spirit, and vinegar with optional shallots and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lemon peel tincture

  1. Pare or grate the outside peel of the lemons.

  2. Beat the grated peel into a pulp with a small quantity of sugar.

  3. Digest the lemon peel in proof spirit for two weeks.

  4. Strain the lemon peel from the proof spirit.

  5. Keep the strained peel in a well-stopped bottle.

Make the pickle

  1. Slice a few shallots.

  2. Mix the sliced shallots with 1 teaspoon of cayenne pepper in 1 quart of good vinegar.

  3. Shake the mixture daily for two weeks.

  4. Strain the mixture.

  5. Add 2 ounces of the tincture of lemon peel.

  6. Optionally add ½ cup of strained lemon juice.

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

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

  2. Lemon + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Shallot + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Spirit + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together125 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Lemon peel
Supplies the bright citrus aroma and flavour that the spirit and vinegar draw out.
Proof spirit
Extracts the lemon oils from the peel, forming the aromatic tincture.
Good vinegar
Acts as the sharp base that carries the flavours and preserves the pickle.
Shallots
Add a pungent, savoury onion flavour that mellows during the steeping.
Cayenne pepper
Adds heat and pungency to the vinegar.

The step that matters

Digesting the peel in proof spirit. The lemon oils must fully dissolve into the spirit over the full two weeks. Stopping early gives a weak, thin aroma, and peel left in too long can pick up bitterness from the pith.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, spirit, pepper, 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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