Skip to main content
Dessert

Watermel Sweet Pickle

A sweet pickle made from watermelon rinds, sugar, vinegar, spices, and preserved in a tea of alum and peach-tree leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Watermel Sweet Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rinds

  1. Prepare the rinds of 2 large melons and soak them overnight in weak salt water.

  2. Rinse the rinds and scald them until tender in a weak tea of alum and peach-tree leaves.

  3. Rinse again in pure water and place in a preserving kettle.

Cook the pickles

  1. Pour over the syrup made from sugar and vinegar, adding mace, cinnamon, white mustard seed, and ginger.

  2. Cook very slowly for a long time until the fruit is clear.

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. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + peachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Ginger + teatop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together216 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Cinnamon + teatop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Watermelon rinds
Form the pickled body, becoming tender and translucent as they cook in the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the pickle and, with the vinegar, forms a syrup that preserves the rinds.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps preserve it.
Alum
Firms the rind tissue so it stays crisp rather than turning mushy during cooking.

The step that matters

Cook very slowly for a long time until the fruit is clear. Long, gentle simmering lets sugar slowly penetrate the rind and replace its water, making it translucent. Heating too fast can toughen or break the rinds before the syrup has fully soaked in.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, mustard, ginger, tea, peach. 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.

You might also like

Ginger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesGinger CakeGinger Cake93 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipes