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Dessert

Sweet Pickle Cantelopes

A sweet pickle made from ripe cantaloupes, sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, and allspice, simmered and stored in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sweet Pickle Cantelopes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cantaloupe

  1. Peel the rind off the cantaloupes and cut them into slices.

  2. Remove the seeds and shave out the soft part next to the seed (about ⅛ inch).

  3. Weigh the prepared cantaloupes and place them in stone jars.

Make and pour the syrup

  1. In a porcelain kettle, combine sugar and vinegar according to the weight of the cantaloupes.

  2. Add cinnamon and allspice to the mixture and boil it.

  3. Pour the hot mixture over the cantaloupes in the jars each morning for three mornings.

Cook and finish

  1. On the fourth morning, cook all the contents in the kettle until the cantaloupes are soft enough to pierce with a straw.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Vinegar + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + cinnamontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

Ripe cantaloupes
Provide the fruit that becomes tender and absorbs the spiced syrup.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the fruit by drawing out moisture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickle its sharp, tangy balance against the sugar.
Stick cinnamon
Adds warm aroma and flavour to the syrup.

The step that matters

Repeated pouring of hot syrup over three mornings. Pouring the hot syrup over the fruit each morning gradually softens and flavours the cantaloupe and draws moisture out of it. Skipping mornings or letting the syrup cool too much can leave the fruit firm and under-flavoured before the final cooking.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Allspicethe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Cardamomfits less well

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

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