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Pare and slice the fruit, and let it stand overnight in weak vinegar; then, to 7 lbs fruit make a syrup of 1 qt. Vinegar, 3 lbs. Sugar, 1/2 oz. Cloves, 1/2 oz whole mace, 1 oz. Cinnamon. Put the fruit into the syrup and let it cook until you can run a straw through the fruit.

(You can find the original recipe in the facsimile copy reproduced in Tom Kelchner’s new book The Story of the 1881 Cumberland Valley Cook and General Recipe Book)

I love cantaloupe, but there’s no way I’m wasting 7 pounds of fruit when I don’t know what I’m going to get. 1 pound is more than enough for a trial, which gives us the additional measurements calculated by sevenths to be: roughly 4.5 ounces of vinegar, then add, uh, .42 lbs. of sugar… and a dash of cinnamon. Cloves can once again go take a hike.

I cut the fruit into chunks and put it in a mixture of half vinegar and half water and let the whole thing sit overnight. I drained off the excess liquid before putting it in a pan and adding the other ingredients. I brought it up to a boil and waited to test it for doneness.

The recipe-recommended straw is probably a wheat straw, not a drinking straw, but I don’t know when straws were invented. I’ll just use my trusty fork to tell me when the fruit is soft. One battered, sacrificial piece of cantaloupe informs me that 10 minutes of boiling time was a enough. It tastes…okay? Kind of sharp from the vinegar but a little bland otherwise. These may improve with cooling time, so let’s see what we get tomorrow.

Reviews – “It looks like peaches” “I don’t like it”

2/5 stars. Cooling did mellow out the flavor a little bit, letting this become a ‘sweet and sour’ kind of taste. However, the vinegar bite is too strong. It actually reminds me of the vinegar pie recipe from earlier. I don’t know if modern vinegar is stronger than what people used before, or if they just had more of a taste for sour back then. The fruit isn’t bad, but it’s not necessarily an improvement on fresh cantaloupe unless you hate cantaloupe. The recipe may have interesting applications – like if you wanted to make preserves, or I could see the strong flavor on a cheese board. Oh, or you could make a mock peach pie for a dinner party under the theme “it’s not what it looks like.”

– Rachael Zuch of Zuch Design