Skip to main content
Main

Lemon Mangoes

Pickled lemons with mustard seed, chilies, horseradish, shallots, ginger, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Lemon Mangoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemons

  1. Cut a circular piece from the blossom end of each lemon, about the size of a shilling.

  2. Scoop out the pulp and skin using the handle of a teaspoon.

  3. Rinse the insides until the water runs clear.

Brine

  1. Soak the lemons in a brine made with ½ pound of salt and 2 quarts of water for 3 days, stirring often.

  2. Change the brine and soak for an additional 3 days.

Fill and pickle

  1. Drain the lemons and fill them with mustard seed, chilies, horseradish, shallots, and ginger.

  2. Sew the cut pieces back onto the lemons.

  3. Place the lemons in a stone jar and pour boiling pickle made from their juice, vinegar, salt, ginger, peppercorns, and mace over them.

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. Mustard + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Horseradish + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 acidic juice that the pickle is built around.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the lemons during brining and seasons the fruit thoroughly.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and sharp flavour to the pickling liquid that preserves the lemons.
Vinegar
Adds acidity to the pickle, helping to preserve the lemons and sharpen their flavour.
Mustard seed
Contributes pungent, sharp flavour that mellows as the lemons pickle.

The step that matters

Changing the brine and soaking the full six days. Salt slowly draws water and bitterness out of the peel and pulp. Skipping the fresh brine or shortening the soak leaves the lemons salty, bitter, and less evenly cured.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

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

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