Skip to main content
Main

Pickled Watermelon Rinds

A pickled preserve made from watermelon rinds, vinegar, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Watermelon Rinds

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rinds

  1. Pare the rinds, removing the colored portion, and cut into strips until you have a 10-quart pail full.

  2. Cover the rinds with cold water and add enough alum to give the water a strong taste. Soak overnight.

  3. Drain the rinds well.

Pickle and store

  1. For each pint of vinegar, add 1 cup of sugar, and a scant tablespoon each of cinnamon, cloves, and allspice (or nutmeg).

  2. Boil the vinegar and sugar together, skimming well. Add the rinds and cover with a large plate.

  3. Boil until the rinds can be easily pricked with a silver fork.

  4. Halfway through boiling, add the spice bags.

  5. Pour everything into a jar and place plates over the vinegar to keep the rinds submerged.

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. Vinegar + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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
Form the pickle itself, becoming tender and crisp-textured as they simmer in the spiced syrup.
Alum
Firms the rind tissue so it holds its shape during long simmering.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
Sugar
Balances the sharp vinegar with sweetness and helps form the syrup.

The step that matters

Boiling until the rinds can be pricked with a silver fork. Stopping too early leaves rinds firm and raw-tasting, while overboiling makes them soft and mushy. Testing for tenderness with a fork tells you when the cell structure has softened enough to absorb the syrup without falling apart.

Swap the clove

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

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

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

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes