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Dessert

Pickled Melons

A sweet and sour pickle made from sliced melons simmered in a spiced vinegar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 the melons.

  2. Peel the melons.

  3. Remove seeds from the melons.

  4. Cut the melons into slices.

  5. Place the slices in a stone jar.

  6. Cover the slices with vinegar.

  7. Let the slices sit for 24 hours.

Make the syrup and pickle

  1. In a pot, combine fresh vinegar, brown sugar, cinnamon, cloves, and allspice.

  2. Boil the mixture. Skim off any foam.

  3. Add the melons to the boiling mixture.

  4. Cook for 20 minutes.

  5. Let the syrup boil for a few minutes.

  6. Pour the syrup 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
Form the main body of the pickle, becoming tender as they cook in the syrup.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickled melon flavor.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps form a thick, rich syrup around the melon.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm aromatic spice flavor to the syrup.
Cloves
Adds strong aromatic spice notes to the syrup.
Allspice
Adds warm, mixed-spice aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Skim off any foam. Foam that forms on boiling syrup carries impurities and can cloud the syrup or spoil the flavor, so it should be removed before the melons go in.

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.

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