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Watermelon Sweet Pickles

Pickled watermelon rinds flavored with sugar, vinegar, spices, and ginger tea.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Watermelon Sweet Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rinds

  1. Peel the watermelon rinds and cut them into fanciful shapes.

  2. Soak the rinds in weak salt water for 24 hours, then drain.

  3. Soak the rinds in weak alum water for another 24 hours.

  4. Make a strong ginger tea using white-root ginger and boil the rinds in it until flavored.

  5. Plunge the rinds into ice water after boiling, then dry each piece with a soft towel.

Make the syrup and pickle

  1. Prepare a syrup with 1 ¼ pounds of sugar, 1 pint of vinegar, and spices to taste.

  2. Boil the rinds in the syrup until tender and clear, then transfer to jars and seal.

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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Cinnamon + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cinnamon + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,009 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Watermelon rinds
Form the pickle body, becoming tender and translucent after soaking and simmering in syrup.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and, in the syrup, preserves the rinds and helps them turn clear.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickle its sour bite and helps preserve it.
Alum
Helps the rinds stay firm and crisp through long cooking.

The step that matters

Boil the rinds in the syrup until tender and clear. Cooking too briefly leaves the rinds tough and opaque, while overcooking can make them soft and mushy. Sugar must penetrate the rind gradually, so the syrup should simmer gently rather than boil hard.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, celery, mustard, vinegar. 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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