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Canned Watermelon

A preserved watermelon made by boiling rind, cooking fruit with sugar syrup and ginger, then canning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Canned Watermelon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rind

  1. Cut the watermelon and remove the cores.

  2. Peel off the green part carefully.

  3. Cut the rind into small pieces, 2 to 3 inches long.

  4. Boil the rind until tender enough to pierce with a fork.

Make the syrup and can

  1. Make a syrup with ½ pound of sugar for each pound of fruit.

  2. Skim the melon and place it in the syrup with a few pieces of race ginger.

  3. Cook for a few minutes, then put in cans and seal while hot.

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

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

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

Watermelon
Provides the fruit and rind that become the main body of the preserve.
White sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, at this quantity, helps preserve it in the syrup.
Race ginger
Adds a sharp, aromatic flavour to the syrup and fruit.

The step that matters

Boil the rind until tender enough to pierce with a fork. Watermelon rind is dense and stays firm unless cooked fully, so it must be tender before it goes into the syrup. Undercooked rind remains tough and chewy in the finished canned fruit.

“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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