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Pumpkin Preserved in Pieces

A method of preserving pumpkin by salting, boiling, and storing in a sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Pumpkin Preserved in Pieces

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pumpkin

  1. Pare the pumpkin, cut it in half, remove the seeds, and divide each half into 2-inch square pieces.

  2. Place the pieces in a stone jar, add ½ cup of salt, and cover with cold water.

  3. Let it stand for 5 hours.

  4. Drain the pumpkin and cover with fresh cold water.

  5. Soak for 2 hours, changing the water 3 or 4 times.

  6. If desired, dissolve 1 teaspoon of powdered alum in 2 quarts of boiling water. Add the alum solution to the pumpkin and bring to a boil.

  7. If omitting alum, bring the pumpkin to a boil in the water and then drain.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. In a preserving kettle, combine 2½ pounds of sugar and 1½ quarts of boiling water.

  2. Boil and skim until clear.

  3. Add the pumpkin to the syrup and cook gently until tender enough to pierce with a skewer.

  4. Carefully lift each piece with a skimmer and place on a large plate.

  5. Let them stand in the sun for 2 hours to harden.

  6. Chip the yellow rind from the lemon and add it to the syrup along with the lemon juice and sliced ginger.

  7. Boil for 10 minutes and let cool.

Jar and seal

  1. Once the pumpkin is hardened and cold, place it in glass jars.

  2. Bring the syrup to a boil again.

  3. Strain the syrup over the pumpkin.

  4. Seal the jars when cool.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pumpkin + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,158 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pumpkin + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together600 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pumpkin
Forms the firm, tender pieces that make up the preserve.
Granulated sugar
Makes the syrup that preserves the pumpkin and gives it sweetness.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the pumpkin during the initial soak, firming its texture.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aroma from the zest and juice to the syrup.
Powdered alum
Helps the pumpkin pieces keep their firmness during cooking.

The step that matters

Cooking the pumpkin in the syrup gently. Boiling hard can break the pieces apart and make them mushy. Gentle cooking lets the sugar slowly penetrate and firm the flesh while keeping its shape.

Swap the pumpkin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, lemon, ginger):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Pumpkinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, ginger. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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