Name: Frozen Watermelon and Cantaloupe
Ingredients: watermelon pulp; cantaloupe pulp; sugar; coarse sea salt; cinnamon or pepper; 1 tablespoon sherry or rum (optional); sliced ripe tomatoes; ginger; lemon

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 ↓

Frozen Watermelon and Cantaloupe

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the watermelon and cantaloupe into small, uniform pieces.
Sprinkle the pieces with sugar, a bit of coarse sea salt, and cinnamon or pepper.
Add 1 tablespoon of sherry or rum if desired.
Chill the mixture in a can with beaters until it becomes a soft mush.
Prepare sliced ripe tomatoes in the same way, flavoring with ginger and 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.

Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,380 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,154 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,950 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Tomato + gingertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,887 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

Swap the tomato

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

Arrowrootfits better
Sweet potatofits better
Carrotfits better
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, sherry, ginger, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.