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Dessert

Mush Melon Pichles

A pickled melon dish made with vinegar, water, sugar, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Mush Melon Pichles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the melons

  1. Peel the melons, remove the seeds, and cut them into shape.

  2. Combine equal parts vinegar and water in a pot and cook the melons until tender.

  3. Drain the melons and place them in a jar.

Make and pour the pickling liquid

  1. For the pickling liquid, use enough vinegar to cover the melons, adding 3 pounds of sugar per quart of vinegar and cinnamon to taste.

  2. Boil the pickling liquid and pour it over the melons while hot.

Rest and repeat

  1. Strain the vinegar the next day.

  2. Boil it again, and repeat the process if desired.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Vinegar + cinnamontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

Melons
Form the pickle body, becoming tender when cooked and absorbing the sweet-sour liquid.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the melons and gives the pickle its sharp flavor.
Sugar
Balances the acidity with sweetness and helps build the syrupy pickling liquid.
Stick cinnamon
Adds warm aroma to the pickling liquid, flavoring the melons as they soak.

The step that matters

Cooking the melons until tender. Unripe melon flesh is firm and starchy, so it must be cooked fully before pickling; undercooked pieces stay hard and resist the pickling liquid.

Swap the melon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, 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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