Skip to main content

Pickled Melons and Cucumbers

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pickled Melons and Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut a slit in each melon and fill with mustard seed, horseradish, garlic, Cayenne pepper, cloves, and mace.

  2. Insert a small skewer through the slit and tie the melon with packthread to keep it together.

  3. Boil vinegar with the mixture and pour it hot over the melons, covering them tightly.

  4. Let the melons sit for 24 hours, then repeat the boiling and pouring process three to four times.

  5. If the melons are not a fine color, place the jar in a cool oven or simmer over low heat until they are sufficiently green.

  6. Do not let them boil, as this will spoil the pickle.

  7. Once cooled, cover tightly and store with bladder and leather for preservation.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Horseradish + garlictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together719 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Mustard + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (melon, mustard, horseradish, clove, garlic, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against melon, mustard, horseradish, clove, garlic, pepper, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

You might also like

Horseradish SauceHorseradish Sauce17 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes