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Dessert

Sweet Pickled Watermel

A sweet pickle made from watermelon rinds simmered in a syrup of vinegar, sugar, mace, cinnamon, and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sweet Pickled Watermel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rinds

  1. Boil the watermelon rinds in pure water until tender, then drain well.

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup by boiling vinegar, sugar, mace, cinnamon, and ginger until thick.

Pickle and pack

  1. Pour the hot syrup over the rinds.

  2. Drain off the syrup for 3 days.

  3. Boil the syrup and pour it over the pickles each time.

  4. Pack the pickles into 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. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Mace + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,152 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

Watermelon rinds
Form the pickle's body, becoming tender after boiling and absorbing the spiced syrup.
Vinegar
Provides the sour acidity that preserves the rinds and balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the pickle and thickens the syrup as it boils down.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet spice aroma to the syrup.
Mace
Adds a delicate, warm aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Draining and reboiling the syrup over 3 days. Repeatedly reboiling the drained syrup and pouring it back over the rinds concentrates flavour and sugar while keeping the pickle moist. Boiling the syrup each time helps keep it safe to store.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

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