Sweet Pickle of Melon (Foreign Receipt) (To serve with roast meat)

Instructions

1. Take, within three or four days of their being fully ripe, one or two well-flavoured melons.
2. Pare off the outer rind, clear them from the seeds, and cut them into slices about half an inch thick.
3. Lay them into good vinegar and let them remain in it for ten days.
4. Cover them with cold fresh vinegar and simmer them very gently until they are tender.
5. Lift them onto a sieve reversed to drain; when quite cold, stick a couple of cloves into each slice.
6. Lay them into a jar (a glass one if at hand) and cover them well with cold syrup made with ten ounces of sugar to the pint of water, boiled quickly together for twenty minutes. Leave them in the syrup about a week (6 to 7 days).
7. Take them from the syrup, let it drain from them a little, then put them into the jars in which they are to be stored.
8. Cover them again thoroughly with good vinegar which has been boiled for an instant and left to become quite cold before it is added.
9. Ready to serve in a month. Serve more particularly with roast mutton, hare and venison instead of currant jelly; it is very good with stewed meat also.
10. Acton's note on testing: she found the receipt answer extremely well as given, when tried with small green melons cut within four days of being fit for table.
11. Variation - a common sweet pickle of melon: prepare the fruit as above; in a fortnight simmer it until tender, drain, lay it into jars, and pour on it while just warm a pickle made with a pound and two ounces of coarse brown sugar, twenty cloves, and half a drachm of cinnamon to the pint of vinegar, boiled together for ten minutes.