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Spiced Nutmeg Melon
Select melons not quite ripe, open, scrape out the pulp, peel, and slice; put the fruit in a stone jar, and, for five pounds fruit, take a quart vinegar, and two and a half pounds sugar; scald vinegar and sugar together, and pour over the fruit; scald the syrup and pour over the fruit each day for eight successive days. On the ninth, add one ounce stick-cinnamon, one of whole cloves, and one of allspice. Scald fruit, vinegar and spices together, and seal up in jars. This pickle should stand two or three months before using. Blue plums are delicious prepared in this way. - Mrs. Gen. Noyes.
A nine-day sweet pickle of the old open-crock type: hot syrup poured over raw fruit again and again until the slices are candied through. The method matters more than the numbers, but a few of the numbers need translating.
- What a nutmeg melon isA small, heavily netted muskmelon of the kind period seed catalogs sold under that name; the nearest thing on sale now is a netted cantaloupe. Buy fruit that is firm and barely fragrant, as the recipe directs: a fully ripe melon will break down over the repeated scaldings.
- The daily scald is the whole techniqueDraining the syrup, bringing it back to a boil, and pouring it over the fruit each day raises the sugar concentration gradually so the slices firm and turn translucent instead of falling apart. Skipping days or trying to do it all in one long boil gives you melon sauce.
- MeasuresA quart of vinegar is 4 cups; 2 1/2 lb sugar is about 5 1/2 cups. The strength of period cider vinegar was variable and cannot be recovered from the recipe; use a standard 5 percent cider vinegar and do not dilute it.
- Spices by weightAn ounce of whole spice is a lot by modern eyes: somewhere between five and ten cinnamon sticks depending on their size, about 4 to 5 tablespoons of whole cloves, and about 4 tablespoons of allspice berries. Tie them in cheesecloth so the syrup stays clear and the cloves can be lifted out before the flavor turns medicinal.
- Stone jarA glazed crock. Any nonreactive vessel works — glass, glazed ceramic, stainless — but not aluminum or bare cast iron, which the vinegar will attack and discolor.
- Sealing"Seal up in jars" means the open-kettle method, filling hot jars and capping them with no further processing. That is no longer accepted practice for shelf storage; follow a current tested pickle recipe for its processing time, or keep the finished jars in the refrigerator and treat them as a fresh pickle.
- Yield and restingFive pounds of prepared melon with this much syrup fills roughly four pint jars. The instruction to wait two or three months is real: the spice and vinegar need that time to settle, and the pickle tastes raw and sharp before it.
- The plum variationBlue plums, probably a damson or prune-type plum, take the same treatment. Prick each one with a needle first or the skins split and the flesh slips out during the scaldings.
Sweet pickles were expected alongside cold meat on a table of this period, and barely ripe melon flesh was among the cheapest raw material a garden produced in quantity. The Dixie Cook Book was compiled by Estelle Woods Wilcox and published in the 1880s. "Nutmeg melon" was a catalog name for a small, round, netted muskmelon; the netting on the rind is often said to have suggested the surface of a nutmeg, though that explanation is traditional rather than documented, and the name has nothing to do with the spice. The long sequence of daily scaldings served preservation as well as texture: each boiling concentrated the syrup and reheated the surface of the fruit before the crock sat for its two or three months. The recipe is credited to a contributor by name, in this case a general's wife, as community cookbooks of the period customarily credited their sources.