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Lemon Pickle

A preserved lemon pickle made with lemons, salt, vinegar, spices, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,192 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Lemon Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemons

  1. Grate the peel lightly from the lemons.

  2. Soak the lemons in a mixture of salt and water for 9 days, rubbing them with fresh salt daily.

  3. After 9 days, wipe the lemons with a cloth.

Make the pickle

  1. In a saucepan, combine the lemons, vinegar, mixed spice, and turmeric.

  2. Boil the mixture for 15 minutes.

  3. Transfer the lemons to a jar and pour the pickle over them.

  4. Once cooled, seal the jar tightly with a bladder.

Make the sugared peel

  1. Mix the grated lemon peel with double its weight in sifted sugar for flavoring puddings.

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 + turmerictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,192 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Vinegar + turmerictop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,214 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + vinegartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 of the pickle, with peel and flesh softened by salting and simmering.
Vinegar
Acts as the preserving liquid, giving the sharp acidity that keeps the pickle stable.
Mixed spice
Adds warm aromatic flavour to the pickle liquid.
Turmeric
Adds a yellow colour and earthy flavour to the pickle.
Sifted sugar
Sweetens the grated peel used for flavouring puddings.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture for 15 minutes. Boiling must be timed so the spices infuse and the lemons soften without the vinegar evaporating too much or the pickle over-reducing. Sealing only once cooled prevents condensation from diluting the preserving liquid and encouraging spoilage.

Swap the turmeric

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Peppermintfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Turmericthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, vinegar, sugar. 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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