Skip to main content
Dessert

Pickled Melons

Pickled melons are ripe melons preserved in a vinegar, sugar, and spice syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

Pickled Melons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the melons

  1. Wash, peel, and remove seeds from the melons, then cut them into slices.

  2. Place the slices in a stone jar and cover with vinegar.

  3. Let them stand for 24 hours.

Make the syrup

  1. For each quart of fresh vinegar, add 3 pounds of brown sugar.

  2. For 12 melons, add 3 ounces of cinnamon, 2 ounces of cloves, and 2 ounces of allspice to the vinegar.

  3. Boil the sugar and spices in the vinegar, skimming well.

Cook and pour

  1. Add the melons to the boiling mixture and cook for 20 minutes.

  2. After removing the melons, let the syrup boil for a few minutes, then pour it over the melons.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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
Provide the fruit that is softened and flavored by the spiced syrup.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the fruit and sharpens the sweet spiced syrup.
Brown sugar
Sweetness and body that thicken the syrup and balance the vinegar's sharpness.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma and flavor to the syrup.
Cloves
Adds strong aroma and pungent flavor to the syrup.
Allspice
Adds warm, mixed-spice aroma and flavor to the syrup.

The step that matters

Timing the melon cooking. Cooking the melons only 20 minutes in the boiling syrup keeps them tender but intact; longer simmering breaks down the fruit's structure and turns it mushy.

Swap the melon

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

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

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

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesClove CakeClove Cake53 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes