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Preserved Melons, Spiced

A preserved melon dish spiced with ginger, cinnamon, and cloves, sweetened with sugar and vinegar.

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 ↓

Preserved Melons, Spiced

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the melon

  1. Cut the melons into quarters.

  2. Remove the seeds and tender flesh.

  3. Peel off the rinds.

  4. Cut about 5 pounds of melon into scallops.

Make and pour the syrup

  1. Combine 6 pounds of sugar and 5 pints of vinegar in a basin. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  2. Pour the boiling syrup over the melons in a jar.

  3. Drain the syrup the next day. Boil the drained syrup and skim it.

  4. Pour the boiling syrup over the melons.

  5. Repeat this daily for 5 days.

Spice and finish

  1. On the sixth day, boil the syrup again.

  2. Add 1 ounce of white ginger, 1 small stick of cinnamon, and 6 cloves. Boil slowly for 15 minutes.

  3. Skim the syrup clear. Remove the syrup from heat and let it cool.

  4. Once cold, transfer the melons to glass jars and cover tightly.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Melon + gingertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together342 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Melon
Provides the fruit that becomes tender and absorbs the sweet, spiced syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the melon and, at high concentration, helps preserve it.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the fruit.
White ginger
Contributes a warm, aromatic spice flavor to the syrup.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Repeated pouring of boiling syrup. Pouring the syrup off, reboiling it and returning it over the melons each day lets the sugar and vinegar penetrate the fruit gradually. Skipping or shortening the daily boils can leave the melon less preserved and more prone to spoiling.

Swap the melon

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

  1. Quincefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Melonthe original

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