Lemon Pickles
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the lemons
Rub the lemons with a piece of flannel.
Slit each lemon halfway down into four quarters, but do not cut through to the bottom.
Fill the slits with salt, pressing it in hard.
Cure
Set the lemons upright in a pan for four to five days until the salt melts.
Turn the lemons three times a day in their own liquid until tender.
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
What each ingredient does
- Small lemons
- Provide the fruit whose peel softens and whose juice forms the brine during curing.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws out juice from the lemons and preserves them while the peel softens.
The step that matters
Pressing the salt into the slits. Salt must be packed in firmly so it reaches the flesh and draws out enough juice to cover the lemons. Loose salt lets the fruit dry and spoil before it softens.
“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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