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Dessert

Sweet Pickle of Melon

A sweet pickle made from sliced melon soaked in vinegar, simmered, and preserved in a sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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

  1. Pare the outer rind off the melons and remove the seeds.

  2. Slice the melons into ½‑inch thick pieces.

  3. Soak the slices in good vinegar for 10 days.

  4. Cover the slices with cold fresh vinegar.

  5. Simmer gently until tender.

  6. Drain the slices on a sieve and let them cool.

  7. Insert a clove into each slice.

  8. Place the slices in a glass jar.

Make the syrup and pack

  1. Make a syrup by boiling 10 ounces of sugar with 1 pint of water for 20 minutes.

  2. Pour the syrup over the melon slices.

  3. After a week, drain the syrup from the slices.

  4. Pack the slices into storage jars.

  5. Cover the slices with boiled and cooled 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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Melon + clovetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together232 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Melon + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together241 recipes

    Shared aroma: cinnamyl acetate (sweet aromatic, cinnamon).

  5. 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 main body of the pickle, whose flesh softens and absorbs the vinegar and syrup.
Vinegar
Acidity preserves the melon and gives the pickle its sharp, tangy flavour.
Sugar
Sweetness balances the sharpness of the vinegar and helps build the syrup.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until tender. Simmering gently softens the melon evenly without breaking the slices apart. Boiling hard can make the flesh ragged and mushy.

“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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