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Watermelon Sweet Pickles

Sweet pickles made from watermelon rinds simmered in sugar, vinegar, 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 ↓

Watermelon Sweet Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rinds

  1. Pare and cut the watermelon rinds into strips.

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

Make and pour the syrup

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

  2. Pour the boiling hot syrup over the melons.

  3. Drain the syrup, heat it until boiling hot, and pour it over the melons for three consecutive days.

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. Sugar + vinegartop 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
Provide the bulk of the pickle, becoming tender and absorbing the syrup after boiling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and thickens the syrup as it boils down.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickle its sharp, preserving tang.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour to the syrup.
Cinnamon
Adds a warm, sweet aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot syrup over the melons over three days. Repeatedly reheating and pouring the syrup lets the rinds gradually absorb sugar and flavour. Heating the syrup to a full boil each time helps keep the pickle safely preserved.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, 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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