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Watermelon Pickle

Pickled watermelon rinds preserved in saltwater and syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Syrup and peach work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 210 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Watermelon Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rinds

  1. Carefully pare off the green part of the watermelon rind and trim off the red core.

  2. Cut the rind into pieces 1 to 2 inches long.

  3. Place the rinds in a porcelain-lined kettle with salt and enough water to nearly cover them.

  4. Boil until tender enough to pierce with a fork, then drain in a colander.

  5. Dry the rinds by pressing them gently with a clean towel.

Make the syrup and cook the rinds

  1. Prepare syrup as directed for pickled peaches.

  2. Treat the rinds similarly in the syrup.

  3. Continue adding rinds as melons are used.

  4. Cook the rinds in salt water first.

  5. Drain the rinds.

  6. Finish as directed for peach pickles.

  7. When boiling the syrup for the last time, add the rinds and boil for 15 minutes.

Pack the jar

  1. Set the jar near the stove.

  2. Skim out the rinds.

  3. Place them in the jar gradually to avoid breaking.

  4. Pour in the boiling hot syrup.

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. Syrup + peachtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together210 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

The step that matters

Boiling the rinds until just tender. Rinds that are undercooked stay tough and rinds that are overcooked turn mushy and fall apart. A fork should pierce them easily before they are drained, so the texture holds through the final simmer in syrup.

“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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