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Watermel Pickle

A pickle made from watermelon rind, boiled in ginger tea and vinegar with sugar, mustard seed, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Watermel Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rind

  1. Peel and cut the rind of the watermelons into small, narrow pieces.

  2. Soak the rind in strong ginger tea overnight.

  3. Boil the soaked rind in the ginger tea until tender.

Make the pickle

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar, sugar, mustard seed, cinnamon, and some ginger tea.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil, then add the boiled fruit.

  3. Boil for 1 hour.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + teatop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together216 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Tea + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  4. Mustard + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Watermelon rind
Forms the firm, chewy body of the pickle once it is cooked until tender.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the pickle while it simmers in the syrup.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps preserve it.
White mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour to the syrup.
Cinnamon stick
Adds warm aroma and sweet spice flavour to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Boil the rind until tender before adding it to the syrup. Watermelon rind is dense and fibrous, so it must be fully softened in the ginger tea first. Adding it raw or underdone to the acidic, sugary syrup leaves it tough, since acid and sugar firm the rind and slow further softening.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Beetrootfits less well

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