Uncle Son’s Watermelon Pickles (actually a stand-in from our farmers’ market).
We recently came across a 30 year old packet of recipes from my mother in Dallas, and among them was Uncle Son’s Watermelon Pickles. This recipe was a perennial blue ribbon winner at the State Fair of Texas so finding it was a real treat. (Uncle Son, aka John A. Smith, was a U.S. Army Brigadier General and accomplished polo player.) Here’s the recipe, then we’ll discuss:
Cut off all red meat and peel off green outside. Cut into small pieces about size of thumb. Get tube of powdered slaked lime [calcium hydroxide] from drugstore. Mix ½ tube of lime with 2 gallons of water. Soak melon pieces overnight in this lime water. Next morning wash melon pieces thoroughly and then cook in plain water until it starts to get tender.
In final cooking put 4 lbs sugar, 1 qt vinegar, 2 T each whole cloves and whole allspice plus 4 pieces of stick cinnamon and add to mixture. (I tie spices in cheesecloth.) Place partially cooked melon pieces in vinegar and spice mixture and simmer until rind is clear (about 20 minutes). Put in jars and cover with syrup.
For specific directions see page 1223 Doubleday Cookbook.
Discussion: there are plenty of watermelon pickle recipes on the web, and all except this one start the watermelon pieces in a salt brine vs Uncle Son’s slaked lime. We have judged a few barbecue competitions and often the decision among preps at a very high level comes down to details. His method probably produced a crisper pickle than others and that swayed the judges year after year.
And what about that Doubleday Cookbook reference? It’s a two-volume opus with no page 1223; if someone has a combined edition with that numbering please let me know. We did find the book on Internet Archive and there’s a watermelon pickle recipe on page 658 of Volume 2; in addition to the slaked lime technique Uncle Son uses 2 T each of cloves and allspice while the recipe calls for 2 t. The transcriber, most likely Uncle Son’s daughter Mary Helen, put a ? after this quantity but it appears on two different recipe cards and “tablespoons” is spelled out on one so it’s not a misprint.
By the way, the Doubleday Cookbook looks to be one hell of an opus, on a par with Joy of Cooking for breadth and detail. Well worth checking out if you find a copy online or in a used book store.
