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Watermelon Pickle

A pickle made from watermelon rinds simmered in salt water and sweetened with a peach-pickle style syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Syrup and peach work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 210 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Watermelon Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rinds

  1. Pare off the green part of the watermelon rind.

  2. Trim off the red core.

  3. Cut the rind into pieces one to two inches long.

  4. Place the rinds in a porcelain-lined kettle.

  5. Add salt and enough water to nearly cover the rinds.

  6. Boil until tender enough to pierce with a silver fork.

  7. Drain the rinds in a colander.

  8. Dry the rinds by pressing gently with a crash towel.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. Prepare syrup as directed for pickled peaches.

  2. Add the rinds to the syrup.

  3. Continue adding rinds as melons are used.

  4. Cook the rinds in salt water first.

  5. Drain the rinds.

  6. Finish as with peach pickles, boiling the syrup until thick.

  7. Add the rinds to the boiling syrup.

  8. Cook for 15 to 20 minutes.

Jar

  1. Skim out the melons.

  2. Place the rinds in a jar gradually.

  3. Pour in the hot syrup.

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. Syrup + peachtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together210 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Watermelon rinds
Form the pickle itself, becoming tender and absorbing the syrup as they cook.
Salt
Draws water out of the rinds and helps firm their texture during the initial boil.

The step that matters

Boiling the rinds until tender. Rinds must be cooked until a silver fork pierces them, since undercooked rind stays tough and fibrous. Overcooking can make them mushy and fall apart in the syrup.

“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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