Name: Spiced Watermelon Rind
Ingredients: Watermelon rind; 2 pounds white sugar; ½ teacup wine vinegar; 1 teacup water; 1 tablespoon broken cinnamon; 1 tablespoon allspice; 1 tablespoon cloves

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 ↓

Spiced Watermelon Rind

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rind

Pare the rind of a watermelon.
Boil the rind in clear water for one hour.

Make the syrup

Make a syrup with 2 pounds of white sugar, ½ teacup of wine vinegar, and 1 teacup of water.
Drain the water from the cooked rind and add it to the syrup.
Add 1 tablespoon of broken cinnamon, 1 tablespoon of allspice, and 1 tablespoon of cloves.
Boil the mixture for three hours.

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.

Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,536 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Wine + vinegartop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,493 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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 rind: Forms the bulk of the preserve and becomes tender and translucent as it cooks in syrup.
White sugar: Sweetens the preserve and, as it thickens into syrup, helps preserve the rind.
Wine vinegar: Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the flavour.

Swap the allspice

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

Allspicethe original
Nutmegfits about as well
Cardamomfits less well
Gingerfits less well

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