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Sweet Pickled Water-melon Kind

A pickled rind of watermelon sweetened with vinegar, spices, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 ↓

Sweet Pickled Water-melon Kind

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rind

  1. Place the watermelon rind in coarse sea salt for three days.

  2. Soak the rind in clear water for two days to refresh it.

  3. Scald the rind in a mixture of vinegar and water.

Pickle

  1. The next day, boil enough vinegar to cover the rind with cloves, cinnamon, mace, allspice, ginger, black pepper, and sugar to taste.

  2. Pour the hot vinegar mixture over the rind.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 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. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Watermelon rind
Forms the pickled body, becoming firm and tender after salting and soaking.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that preserves the rind and gives the pickle its tang.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Cloves
Contributes warm aromatic flavor to the pickling liquid.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm sweet aroma to the pickling liquid.
Ginger
Adds a sharp, aromatic note to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Salting the rind for three days. Salt draws water out of the rind through osmosis, firming its texture. The later soaking in clear water removes excess salt so the pickle is not overly salty.

Swap the melon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, clove, cinnamon, mace, allspice, ginger, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, clove, cinnamon, mace, allspice, ginger, pepper. 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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