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Watermelon Pickle
Pare off very carefully the green part of the rind of a good, ripe watermelon, trim off the red core, cut in pieces one or two inches in length, place in a porcelain-lined kettle, in the proportion of one gallon rinds to two heaping tea-spoons common salt and water to nearly cover, boil until tender enough to pierce with a silver fork, pour into a colander to drain, and dry by taking a few pieces at a few pieces at a time in the hand, and pressing gently with a crash towel. Make syrup, and treat rinds exactly as directed for pickled peaches. Continue adding rinds, as melons are used at table, preparing them first by cooking in salt water as above when as many are prepared as are wanted, and they are nearly pickled, drain and finish as directed in peach pickles, except when the syrup is boiled the last time, put in melons and boil fifteen minutes; set jar near stove, skim out melons and put in jar a few at a time, heating gradually SO as not to break it, then pour in syrup boiling hot. A rind nearly an inch thick, crisp and tender, is best, although any may be used. If scum rises, and the syrup assumes a whitish appearance , drain , boil and skim syrup, add melons, and boil until syrup is like thin molasses.
A staggered, days-long sweet pickle that assumes you are eating watermelon all week and adding the rinds as they accumulate. The syrup proportions are not here — they sit in the peach pickle recipe this one cross-references — so read that entry first.
- The syrup you are missing"Treat rinds exactly as directed for pickled peaches" points to the sweet-pickle syrup given under peach pickles: sugar, vinegar and whole spices, with the syrup drained off, reboiled and poured back over the fruit on successive days. The proportions are not recoverable from this page; without that entry you have no recipe.
- A gallon of rindsAbout 4 lb of trimmed rind, which is roughly what one large melon yields. Two heaping teaspoons of salt in water to nearly cover is a light brine, not a preserving one — it firms the rind and seasons it.
- Silver forkSilver was specified because it does not stain or react with acid fruit; cooks were taught to keep iron and steel away from fruit. Any fork will tell you when the rind is translucent and yields with slight resistance.
- Crash towelCrash is a coarse, loosely woven linen — absorbent and rough. A flour-sack towel does the same work. Drying the rind matters because surface water thins the syrup on first contact.
- Rind thicknessThe book is right that a thick, firm rind holds up best. Modern seedless melons are bred for thin rind and often give a flabby pickle; a thick-skinned picnic or heirloom melon is worth seeking out.
- Peel to the pale green lineTake off all the dark green skin and every trace of pink flesh. Pink flesh left on breaks down into mush and clouds the syrup.
- The whitish scumThe fix given, drain, reboil and skim the syrup, then boil the fruit in it until the syrup runs like thin molasses, is the point of the closing sentence. Scum and cloudiness generally mean the syrup is too thin; concentrating it is the remedy the book offers.
- Sealing and storagePouring boiling syrup over hot fruit in a warmed jar is open-kettle packing, which no longer counts as a seal. Treat the result as a refrigerator pickle, or process filled jars by a current water-bath schedule for sweet pickles.
- Text note"A few pieces at a few pieces at a time" is a typesetter's repetition in the original, left as printed.
Watermelon rind pickle is one of the great thrift preserves of the American South, and it survives in cookbooks precisely because the rind is the part of the melon nobody eats. The technique itself is older and European — sweet spiced pickles of firm fruit and vegetable flesh in vinegar syrup go back to the citron and cucumber preserves of English receipt books, and citron melon was pickled the same way. What is distinctive here is the household rhythm: the recipe assumes melons come to the table repeatedly over a week in season, and it tells the cook to brine each batch of rinds as they appear and hold them until enough have gathered for one syrup. The Dixie Cook Book was compiled in the 1880s from the same body of material as the Ohio-based Buckeye books, reissued for a Southern market.