Name: Sweet Pickle of Melon
Ingredients: 1 or 2 ripe melons; Good vinegar; Cold fresh vinegar; 10 ounces sugar; 1 pint water; Cloves; Cinnamon (optional)

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Sweet Pickle of Melon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the melon

Pare the outer rind of the melons, remove the seeds, and slice them into ½-inch thick pieces.
Submerge the slices in good vinegar for 10 days.
Cover the slices with cold fresh vinegar.
Simmer gently until tender.
Drain the slices on a sieve.
Let them cool completely.
Insert a clove into each slice.
Place the slices in a glass jar.

Make the syrup and pickle

Make a syrup by boiling 10 ounces of sugar with 1 pint of water for 20 minutes.
Pour the syrup over the melon slices.
After a week, drain the syrup from the slices.
Pack the slices into storage jars.
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.

Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Melon + clovetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together232 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Melon + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together241 recipes

Shared aroma: cinnamyl acetate (sweet aromatic, cinnamon).
Melon + vinegartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together416 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 absorbs the vinegar and syrup flavours.
Vinegar: Acidity that preserves the melon and gives the pickle its sharp, tangy character.
Sugar: Sweetness that balances the vinegar and, boiled into syrup, helps preserve the slices.

“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.