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Dessert

Pickled Melons

A sweet and sour pickle made by soaking melon slices in a vinegar and spice 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, peel them, and remove the seeds.

  2. Cut the melons into slices and place the slices in a stone jar.

  3. Cover the jar with vinegar and let the slices sit for 24 hours.

Make the syrup

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

  2. Boil the mixture and skim off any foam.

  3. Add the melons to the boiling mixture and cook for 20 minutes.

  4. Remove the melons from the boiling mixture and let the syrup boil for a few minutes.

Pickle

  1. 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

Ripe melons
Provide the fruit that becomes tender and absorbs the spiced syrup.
Vinegar
Acidifies the fruit and syrup, giving the pickle its tang and helping preserve it.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the syrup and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma and flavor to the syrup.
Cloves
Adds a strong, warm aroma and spice flavor to the syrup.
Allspice
Adds a blended warm spice flavor to the syrup.

The step that matters

Skimming the boiling syrup. Foam that forms on boiling sugar and vinegar can carry impurities and cloud the syrup. Removing it keeps the pickling liquid clear and clean-tasting.

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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