Skip to main content
Main

Dover House Watermelon Rind Pickle

A pickled watermelon rind preserved with sugar, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon 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 ↓

Dover House Watermelon Rind Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rind

  1. Peel the rind from the watermelon and cut it into small squares.

  2. Soak the rind overnight in slightly salted water to cover the fruit.

  3. Measure the water used; for each quart, add ½ teaspoon of powdered alum.

  4. In the morning, drain the water and wash the rind in clean, cold water until there is no taste of alum or salt.

  5. If necessary, soak in fresh water for an hour or two.

Cook and pickle

  1. Drain the rind and place it in a preserving kettle.

  2. Add sugar, vinegar, and spices, then simmer gently until tender and transparent.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  5. Cider + cinnamontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,497 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

Watermelon rind
Forms the bulk of the pickle and becomes tender and translucent when simmered in syrup.
Powdered alum
Firms the rind so it keeps its texture during long cooking.
Sugar
Sweetens the pickle and, with the vinegar, helps preserve the rind.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the pickle.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until tender and transparent. Boiling hard can break the softened rind apart and make it cloudy. Gentle simmering lets the sugar syrup slowly penetrate the rind, making it tender and translucent while keeping its shape.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cider, vinegar, 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.

You might also like

Ham in CiderHam in Cider10 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes