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Dessert

Sweet Pickle of Melon

A sweet pickle made by soaking melon slices in vinegar, sugar syrup, and cloves, then storing in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Pickle of Melon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the melon

  1. Pare the outer rind of the melons, remove the seeds, and slice them into ½ inch thick pieces.

  2. Soak the slices in good vinegar for 10 days.

  3. Cover the slices with cold fresh vinegar and simmer gently until tender.

  4. Drain the slices on a sieve and let them cool.

Make the syrup and pack

  1. Insert a clove into each slice and place them in a glass jar.

  2. Make a syrup by boiling 10 ounces of sugar with 1 pint of water for 20 minutes, then pour it over the melon slices.

  3. After a week, drain the syrup from the slices and pack them into storage jars.

  4. Cover the slices with boiled and cooled good vinegar.

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
Form the main body of the pickle, becoming tender and absorbing the vinegar and syrup flavours.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the melon and gives the pickle its sharp, tangy character.
Sugar
Sweetness that balances the acidity of the vinegar in the syrup.

The step that matters

Simmer the slices gently until tender. Simmering gently softens the melon through without breaking the slices apart. Boiling hard can make the flesh ragged and mushy before it has absorbed the pickling liquid.

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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