Skip to main content
Dessert

Melon Marmalade

A preserve made from watermelon rinds, sugar, gelatin, and marmalade, flavored with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Melon Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rinds

  1. Pare and weigh the watermelon rinds.

  2. Soak the rinds in strong brine for a week.

  3. Soak the rinds in water until they are fresh enough.

  4. Boil the rinds in water until tender.

Make the marmalade

  1. Combine ½ pound of white sugar with 1 pound of the rind.

  2. Boil the mixture until it begins to thicken.

  3. Add 1 box of dissolved gelatin to 12 pounds of marmalade.

  4. Stir frequently and boil until you can slice it.

Flavor and finish

  1. Once cold, flavor with lemon.

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

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

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 rinds
Make up the bulk of the marmalade and give it a tender, chewy body.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the mixture thicken as it boils.
Gelatin
Sets the marmalade so it holds a firm, sliceable shape when cold.

The step that matters

Boil until you can slice it. Stopping too early leaves the marmalade too soft to set, while boiling too long makes it stiff and tough. Stirring frequently keeps the sugar from scorching on the bottom of the pan.

“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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes