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Dessert

Sweet Melon Pickle

A pickled melon dish made by soaking melon slices in vinegar, sweetened with sugar syrup, and spiced with cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Melon and clove work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 232 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Sweet Melon Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the melon

  1. Gather melons 2-3 days before they are fully ripe.

  2. Pare off the rind and remove the seeds.

  3. Cut into ½ inch thick slices.

  4. Place the slices in cold vinegar for 10 days.

  5. Remove the slices.

  6. Place them in a saucepan and pour cold vinegar over the slices until covered.

  7. Simmer gently until tender.

  8. Drain the slices on a reversed sieve.

Make the syrup and pack

  1. Stick 2 cloves into each slice when cool.

  2. Boil sugar and water for 20 minutes to make a syrup.

  3. Let the syrup cool.

  4. Place the melon slices in a glass jar and pour the cold syrup over the slices.

  5. Let it all stand for a week.

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. Melon + clovetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together232 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Melon + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together416 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Melon + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together796 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Melons
Provide the flesh that becomes tender and translucent after vinegar and syrup treatment.
Cold vinegar
Acidity that preserves the melon slices and sharpens their flavour.
Sugar
Sweetness and preservation through the syrup that soaks into the slices.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until tender. Boiling vigorously can break the melon slices apart, while gentle simmering softens the flesh evenly so it holds its shape in the jar.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Peppermintfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Clovethe original

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