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Pickled Cantaloupes

A pickled cantaloupe dish made with elder vinegar, sugar, cloves, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Pickled Cantaloupes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Select ripe cantaloupes with rough rind.

  2. Remove seeds, peel, and cut into small square pieces.

  3. Cover with elder vinegar and let stand for 24 hours.

  4. Pour off part of the vinegar.

Cook

  1. To the remaining vinegar, add 3 pounds of sugar.

  2. Simmer on the stove until tender and clear.

  3. Add ground cloves and cinnamon, and cook for 10 more minutes.

Cool and store

  1. Let cool completely, then cover and store in a cool, dark place.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + cinnamontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,187 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

Cantaloupes
Provide the fruit that softens and becomes tender during simmering.
Elder vinegar
Adds acidity and helps preserve the fruit.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps preserve it in the syrup.
Ground cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor.
Ground cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma and flavor.

The step that matters

Simmer until tender and clear. Simmer gently rather than boiling hard so the cantaloupe softens and turns clear without breaking apart. The sugar must be fully dissolved first so the syrup preserves the fruit evenly.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Allspicefits about as well
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Cardamomfits about as well

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

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