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Stuffing for Forty Melons

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stuffing for Forty Melons

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Select melons larger than a goose egg and pour boiling salt water over them; let them stand overnight.

  2. The next morning, make a slit from the stem to the blossom end and carefully remove all seeds.

  3. Return the melons to the brine and let them soak for six days.

  4. After six days, place them in the best cider vinegar and let them sit for ten days.

  5. Wipe out the insides of the melons and mix the other ingredients into a paste with the salad oil.

  6. Stuff each melon well with the mixture, adding a small clove of garlic to each.

  7. Tie the melons tightly and pack them in a stone jar, layering with a little stuffing and a piece of alum.

  8. Cover well with the best cider 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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ginger, horseradish, mustard, onion, nutmeg, pepper, celery):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, horseradish, mustard, onion, nutmeg, pepper, celery. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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