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Dessert

Watermelon or Citron Preserves

Preserves made from watermelon rind or citron, sweetened with sugar and flavored with cinnamon and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Watermelon or Citron Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rind

  1. Peel the melon rind, removing the green and pink parts, and cut it into desired shapes.

  2. Soak the rind in 1 gallon of water with salt and alum until brittle.

  3. Drain the rind and place it in a vessel.

  4. Cover the rind with enough water, add ginger, and cook until tender.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. Make a syrup by boiling sugar with water and cinnamon.

  2. Drain the rind and add it to the syrup with ginger.

  3. Cook until the syrup thickens, about 30 minutes to 1 hour.

Jar and seal

  1. Transfer to jars, let cool, cover with paraffin, and seal.

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. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Melon + gingertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together342 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Melon + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together241 recipes

    Shared aroma: cinnamyl acetate (sweet aromatic, cinnamon).

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Melon rind
Forms the bulk of the preserve and, after soaking and cooking, becomes tender and absorbs the syrup.
Sugar
Makes the syrup thick and sweet and helps preserve the rind.
Alum
Firms the rind's texture so it stays crisp during long cooking.
Cinnamon bark
Adds warm aroma and flavor to the syrup.
Ginger root
Adds a sharp, aromatic flavor that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Cook the rind until tender before adding it to the syrup. Alum-firmed rind stays firm, so it must be fully tender before entering the syrup. Once the sugar concentrates, the rind can no longer soften and will stay tough.

Swap the melon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, 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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