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Dessert

The Luscious Melon

Melon slices soaked in sherry, coated in batter, fried, and served with a sweet lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

The Luscious Melon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the melon

  1. Soak slices of melon in sherry and ½ cup sugar for at least 30 minutes.

  2. Drain the soaked melon.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, sift 1 cup flour and ¼ teaspoon sugar.

  2. Add egg yolks, 1 tablespoon melted butter, and ½ cup milk to the flour mixture.

  3. Beat egg whites until light.

  4. Fold the beaten egg whites into the batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip the melon slices in the batter.

  2. Fry the battered melon slices in hot lard until golden brown.

  3. Dust the fritters with powdered sugar.

  4. Serve the fritters with sauce.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, stir together ½ cup powdered sugar, 1 heaping tablespoon butter, and 1 teaspoon flour.

  2. Gradually stir in ½ cup boiling water and cook until clear, stirring constantly.

  3. Add strained juice of 1 lemon.

  4. Serve.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Melon + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Sherry + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Whites beaten and folded in give the batter a light, airy texture; yolks enrich it.
All-purpose flour
Forms the batter's structure, holding the coating around the melon as it fries.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the batter and a rounded flavor to the sauce.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and loosens the batter so it coats the melon evenly.
Sugar
Sweetens the melon and the batter and helps the fritters brown.

The step that matters

Frying the battered melon in hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the batter absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of crisping and browning quickly. Hot fat sets the coating fast, so the melon stays moist inside.

Swap the melon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sherry, sugar, flour, egg, butter, milk, sauce):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Melonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, sugar, flour, egg, butter, milk, sauce. 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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