Skip to main content
Dessert

Sweet Watermelon Pickle

A sweet pickle made from watermelon rind, sugar, vinegar, spices, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sweet Watermelon Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rind

  1. Cut the watermelon rind into small pieces and soak for 3 to 4 hours.

  2. Weigh the soaked rind and combine with sugar and vinegar in a saucepan.

Make the syrup and pickle

  1. Bring the mixture to a boil. Skim well.

  2. Add a spice bag with nutmeg, cinnamon, mace, and cloves. Cook for 4 minutes.

  3. Pour the boiling mixture over the rind and let it stand overnight.

  4. Drain the syrup from the rind.

  5. Boil the syrup again with the spice bag and pour it over the rind.

  6. Repeat this process twice.

  7. Put the rind and syrup into a preserving kettle and boil for 3 minutes.

  8. Add the strained juice of 4 lemons and cook for 3 more minutes.

Seal

  1. Seal in hot, sterilized fruit jars while boiling hot.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Watermelon rind
Forms the main body of the pickle, becoming tender and absorbing the syrup as it cooks.
Granulated sugar
Provides sweetness and, with the vinegar, creates the syrup that preserves the rind.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps preserve it.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and brightness that balances the sweetness of the syrup.

The step that matters

Repeating the syrup pour and boil. Each reheating draws syrup into the rind and concentrates the sugar and vinegar. Boiling the syrup fully each time helps the rind become translucent and preserves it well.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, vinegar, nutmeg, cinnamon, clove, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, nutmeg, cinnamon, clove, lemon. 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

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipes