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Dessert

Watermel Rind Preserves

Preserves made by simmering watermelon rind with sugar, water, and spices, then steeping in syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,152 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Watermel Rind Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rind

  1. Line the bottom and sides of a kettle with vine leaves.

  2. Layer watermelon rind and vine leaves, adding a small piece of alum in each layer.

  3. Cover with leaves and a wet towel.

  4. Add enough water to cover everything.

Cook the rind

  1. Simmer for 1 hour.

  2. Remove the rind and place it on a dish.

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup by boiling 1 pound of sugar with 1 pint of water.

  2. Once the scum stops rising, add the rind.

  3. Simmer for 30 minutes.

  4. Remove the rind again.

  5. Let the syrup simmer for 1 hour.

  6. Add the rind back to the syrup and simmer for another 30 minutes.

Finish and jar

  1. Let it stand overnight.

  2. Pour off the syrup and boil it until thick like honey.

  3. Pour the thick syrup over the rind in a jar and season with mace or ginger.

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. Mace + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,152 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

  3. Sugar + macetop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,096 recipes

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 rind
Forms the preserve itself, becoming tender and translucent as it cooks slowly in syrup.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and, as it concentrates, thickens the syrup and helps preserve the rind.
Alum
Firms the rind so it keeps its texture through long simmering.
Mace
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the finished syrup.
Ginger
Adds a warm, aromatic bite that sits well against the sweet syrup.

The step that matters

Add the rind only once the scum stops rising. Skimming off the foam before adding the rind keeps the syrup clear and clean-tasting. Foam left on the surface can cook back into the syrup and cloud it.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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