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Dessert

Watermelon Preserves

Preserved watermelon rind sweetened with sugar and flavored with lemon and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,150 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Watermelon Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare and cut the watermelon rind into pieces.

  2. Weigh the rind and use ¾ lb of sugar for each lb.

Make the preserves

  1. Place the rind in a preserving kettle with a little water and cook for 30 minutes.

  2. Add the sugar and cook slowly until the rind is clear and the syrup is thick.

  3. Just before finishing, add the sliced and seeded lemons and a few whole cloves for flavor.

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. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  3. Sugar + clovetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

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

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 rind
Forms the bulk of the preserve and becomes tender and translucent as it cooks in syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, as it thickens into syrup, helps preserve the rind and give it body.
Sliced and seeded lemons
Adds acidity and brightness that balance the sweetness of the syrup.

The step that matters

Cooking the sugar in slowly. Adding sugar and cooking slowly lets it dissolve and penetrate the rind gradually. Cooking too fast can leave the rind tough or the syrup scorched before the rind turns clear.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon. 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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