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Watermelon Sweet Pickle

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

Watermelon Sweet Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rind

  1. Remove the pink pulp and green rind from the watermelon.

  2. Cover the rind with cold water and add 1 tablespoon of salt for each quart of water. Let it stand overnight, then rinse and drain thoroughly.

Cook and pack

  1. Boil together the sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, and cloves.

  2. Add the rind and cook until transparent. Set aside overnight.

  3. Boil a second time. Drain the rind from the syrup.

  4. Reduce the syrup by boiling. Pour the syrup over the rind packed in fruit jars.

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

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

  4. Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Watermelon rind
Forms the bulk of the pickle and becomes tender and translucent as it cooks in syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the pickle and, as the syrup thickens, helps preserve the rind.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps preserve it.
Paper-bark cinnamon
Infuses the syrup with warm, sweet spice aroma.
Cloves
Adds pungent, warm aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Rinse and drain the salted rind thoroughly. Salt draws water out of the rind; if it is not rinsed off and well drained, the residual salt stays in the pickle and the syrup is diluted, affecting flavor and preservation.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Allspicefits about as well
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Cardamomfits about as 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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