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Dessert

Watermelon or Muskmelon Marmalade

A sweet preserve made from watermelon rind, sugar, and citrus peelings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Watermelon or Muskmelon Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rind

  1. Weigh the soaked watermelon rind.

  2. Parboil the rind until tender.

Make the marmalade

  1. Make a thin syrup with 12 pounds of sugar and add the rind.

  2. Boil until the rind breaks apart.

  3. Add the peelings of the oranges and lemons, cut into strips and boiled soft.

  4. Stir constantly from the bottom while cooking until thick.

Jar

  1. Transfer to wide-mouthed glass jars.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  3. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Watermelon rind
Forms the bulk of the marmalade and becomes tender, giving it body as it cooks down.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, as it thickens, helps it set into a spreadable texture.
Orange peelings
Adds bitter aromatic flavor and pectin that helps the marmalade thicken.
Lemon peelings
Adds acidity and aroma and extra pectin that helps the marmalade set.

The step that matters

Stir constantly from the bottom while cooking until thick. Sugar-rich mixtures scorch easily on the bottom of the pot. Constant stirring prevents burning and spreads heat evenly while the syrup concentrates and thickens.

“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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