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Dessert

Common Sweet Pickle of Melon

A sweet pickle made by preserving melon slices in vinegar and sugar with cloves and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Common Sweet Pickle of Melon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the melon

  1. Pare off all the hard rind of the melon and scoop out the seeds.

  2. Cut the melon into slices 1 inch thick.

  3. Submerge the slices in cold vinegar and let them sit for 14 days.

  4. Simmer the melon in fresh vinegar until tender, then drain well.

Make the pickle and jar

  1. In a pot, combine the sugar, cloves, and cinnamon with 1 pint of vinegar and boil for 10 minutes.

  2. When the mixture is nearly cold, place the melon in jars and pour the pickle over it, ensuring it rises 1 inch above the melon.

  3. Let it cool before sealing the jars.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Melon + clovetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together232 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Melon + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together241 recipes

    Shared aroma: cinnamyl acetate (sweet aromatic, cinnamon).

  5. Melon + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together416 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Melon
Forms the pickled body of the dish, becoming tender and absorbing the spiced syrup.
Vinegar
Acidic liquid that softens and preserves the melon while carrying the flavour of the pickle.
Coarse brown sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the pickling syrup, balancing the sharpness of the vinegar.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavour to the pickling syrup.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aromatic flavour to the pickling syrup.

The step that matters

Simmering the melon until tender. Melon flesh needs enough heat to soften fully; undercooked slices stay firm and resist absorbing the syrup, while overcooking makes them collapse. Draining well keeps excess vinegar from diluting the pickle.

Swap the melon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Quincefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Melonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, clove, cinnamon. 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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