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Pickled Melons

A pickled melon dish preserved in a vinegar and spice brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,776 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Pickled Melons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the melons

  1. Slice the melons and remove the seeds.

  2. Sprinkle the melons with salt and let them sit.

Make the pickle

  1. In a bowl, mix mustard flour, curry powder, ground ginger, turmeric, and cayenne pepper with a little vinegar.

  2. Boil the remaining vinegar and stir in the spice mixture.

  3. Pour the hot vinegar over the melons in a jar.

  4. Cover the jar with a lid when the mixture cools.

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 + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Mustard + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Turmeric + shallottop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together282 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Turmeric + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Melons
Make up the bulk of the pickle and absorb the spiced vinegar as they soften.
Mustard flour
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that gives the pickle its characteristic bite.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
Curry powder
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavour to the vinegar.

The step that matters

Pour the hot vinegar over the melons in a jar. The vinegar must be boiling when it goes over the melons so the heat and acid begin to work on the fruit and help keep the pickle stable. Pouring it over sliced melons that were salted first also draws out excess water, which helps the pieces take up the spiced liquid.

Swap the melon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, mustard, flour, ginger, turmeric, pepper, shallot):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Melonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, mustard, flour, ginger, turmeric, pepper, shallot. 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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