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Watermelon Pickle
Cut the rind into small pieces and cover with cold water, to which add 1 tablespoonful salt. Let boil until it can be pierced with a fork (about 1 hour), then drain off the water and throw pickles into cold water, changing it several times while the following syrup is prepared: 1 quart vinegar, 3 pounds sugar, 4 tablespoonfuls stick cinnamon, 1 tablespoonful whole cloves. Let this boil five minutes and pour it over the pickles from which the water has been drained. Let stand overnight; the next day drain off the syrup and let boil for five minutes; then pour over pickles. The third day boil all together five minutes; when it is done put a cheesecloth over the pickles.
A three-day syrup pickle of the old school, where the rind is candied gradually rather than all at once so it stays translucent instead of collapsing. Everything hinges on how the rind is trimmed before it ever meets water.
- Trimming the rindPeel off every trace of the green outer skin and scrape away all the pink flesh; only the pale, firm layer between them should go into the pot. Green skin stays leathery and pink flesh turns to mush and clouds the syrup.
- Quantity of rindThe recipe never says how much rind the syrup is meant for. A quart of vinegar with 3 pounds of sugar makes a generous quantity of syrup, enough to cover several pounds of trimmed rind. Cut the pieces to a uniform inch or so, since ragged sizes cook unevenly.
- The salted waterOne tablespoon of salt is measured against an unstated volume of water, so treat it as seasoning rather than a curing brine. A tablespoon of salt to a quart of water is a common working proportion.
- An hour is too longAn hour may be longer than needed -- Trimmed rind cut small is often fork-tender well before the hour the recipe allows, depending on thickness and ripeness. Test early and drain when a fork goes through with slight resistance, since the rind is boiled three more times in syrup.
- SpicesFour tablespoons of stick cinnamon means broken pieces, not ground — about four or five 3-inch sticks snapped up. Tie the cinnamon and cloves in a square of cheesecloth or a tea ball so the finished syrup stays clear and the cloves can be lifted out.
- Why three daysEach round of hot syrup draws a little more water from the rind and replaces it with sugar. Rushing it by boiling everything hard on day one gives shrivelled, tough pickle; the standing time between boils is doing the work.
- The cheesecloth at the endDraping cloth over the crock was a pantry practice, not a seal. Pack the finished pickle hot into clean jars, cover with the boiling syrup, and keep it refrigerated — or follow a current tested boiling-water canning process if you want it shelf-stable.
- Yield and useThe recipe gives no yield, and it depends entirely on how much rind is used; a quart of vinegar with 3 pounds of sugar makes a substantial batch. Serve cold with ham, cold roast pork or a cheese board; the syrup is worth keeping for basting.
Watermelon rind pickle belongs to the American thrift tradition, in which the rind that would otherwise be discarded was turned into a sweet-sour condiment for the winter table. Sweet spiced pickles of this kind — vinegar, sugar, stick cinnamon and cloves, boiled over successive days — descend from English preserving practice and appear in nineteenth-century American cookbooks, and the dish is often associated with the South, where watermelons were plentiful. Such recipes reflect the period's expectation that a dinner carried something sharp and sweet alongside the meat, and that a household with a crock and a spare afternoon would make it rather than buy it.