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To Pickle Lemons

A method for pickling lemons with salt, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Pickle Lemons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemons

  1. Cut lemons deeply from end to end in several places, but not completely through.

  2. Fill the incisions with coarse sea salt and place lemons upright in a dish.

  3. Leave the dish near a fire or in the sun for 3 weeks to dissolve the salt, repeating as necessary.

Pack and cover

  1. After 3 weeks, place lemons in a jar with mustard seeds, bruised ginger, cloves, allspice, chilis, and turmeric.

  2. Boil vinegar and pour it over the lemons when cooled.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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 juice that the salt and vinegar work on.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the lemons and softens the rind over the long salting.
Vinegar
Adds acidity and preserves the lemons once they are covered.
White mustard seeds
Add a sharp, pungent flavor that deepens as the lemons sit.

The step that matters

Leaving the salted lemons for 3 weeks. The salt must draw out moisture and soften the rind over the full period. Stopping early leaves the rind tough and the lemons under-salted, so they can spoil or taste harsh.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, ginger, clove, allspice, turmeric, vinegar):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Mangofits about as well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, ginger, clove, allspice, turmeric, 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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