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Citron Sweet Pickle
Two large citron melons, pared, and cut into squares. Place in kettle and turn on boiling water. Add one-third teaspoon of powdered alum, and boil until easily pierced with a silver fork. Drain in a colander. Take three quarts of vinegar, not too strong, four pounds of white sugar and one-fifth of a pound of cassia buds. Boil together ten minutes, then add the squares of citron and boil for five minutes longer.
A syrup pickle of the old preserving-melon type, where the fruit contributes texture and the sugar and spice contribute everything else. Two details need translating before you start: what the melon is, and what to do with the jars.
- Citron melon is not candied citronThis is the preserving melon (Citrullus lanatus var. citroides), a hard, white-fleshed relative of the watermelon grown specifically for pickles and preserves. It is not the citrus fruit sold as candied peel. If you cannot find one, the white rind of a watermelon behaves much the same way.
- Cassia budsThe dried unopened flower buds of the cassia tree, sold by spice merchants and still available online. They taste like a sharper cinnamon. One-fifth of a pound is roughly 3 oz, which is a great deal of whole spice for three quarts of syrup; tie it in cheesecloth so you can lift it out and taste as you go.
- The alumPowdered alum was the standard firming agent for melon and cucumber pickles. It is still sold in the spice aisle and is harmless at this dose, but it is not necessary. Long soaking in ice water, or simply not overcooking the squares, gives much the same crispness.
- Boil until pierced with a silver forkSilver forks were routinely specified in preserving recipes of this kind, the usual reasoning being that they would not discolour or react with the fruit and acid; any stainless fork does the job now. The melon should give with slight resistance, like a just-cooked potato. Past that point it collapses in the syrup.
- Vinegar strength"Not too strong" points to ordinary household vinegar; vinegar of the period varied a good deal in acidity and was not standardised. Use cider or white vinegar at 5 percent acidity and do not dilute it.
- No canning directions are givenThe recipe stops at the boiling and says nothing about jars or sealing. Treat this as a refrigerator pickle and keep it cold, or follow a current tested procedure if you want shelf-stable jars.
The citron melon earned its place in American kitchen gardens by being almost inedible raw: hard, dry, faintly bitter, and therefore a perfect blank surface for sugar and spice. Nineteenth-century cookbooks used it for sweet pickles like this one and, more often, as a cheap stand-in for candied citron peel in fruitcake and mincemeat, which is often said to be how it got its name. The recipe belongs to what the late-summer household did with a glut of hard fruit and a barrel of vinegar. Cassia buds, now a specialty item, were an everyday pickling spice then, sold loose alongside whole cloves and stick cinnamon; recipes of the period call for them by the ounce without further explanation, which is a fair measure of how ordinary they once were.