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Pickled Lemons

A pickled lemon preserved in brine and seasoned with mustard seed, chilies, horseradish, shallots, ginger, vinegar, peppercorns, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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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 ↓

Pickled Lemons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemons

  1. Cut a circular piece from the blossom end of each lemon.

  2. Scoop out the pulp with a teaspoon.

  3. Rinse the insides of the lemon rinds until the water runs clear.

Brine the rinds

  1. Soak the rinds in a brine made of ½ pound salt and 2 quarts water for 3 days.

  2. Change the brine and continue soaking for another 3 days.

  3. Drain the rinds.

Fill and pickle

  1. Fill the rinds with mustard seed, chilies, horseradish, shallots, and ginger. Sew the cut ends back on.

  2. Place the lemons in a stone jar.

  3. Pour boiling pickle made from the lemon juice, vinegar, salt, ginger, peppercorns, and mace over the lemons.

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
Their rinds form the edible vessel, and their juice contributes sourness to the pickle.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the rinds and seasons them during the long brine soak.
Vinegar
Adds acidity to the pickle, helping preserve the lemons and giving a sharp flavor.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavor that deepens as the lemons pickle.

The step that matters

Rinsing the rinds until the water runs clear. Leftover pulp and juice left inside the rinds can ferment or spoil during pickling, so thorough rinsing removes the material most likely to cause trouble.

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.

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