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Preserve

Glass Melons and Citrons

Glass melons and citrons are fruits peeled, shaped, cooked in alum water, then candied in a sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Melon and peach share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 65 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

Glass Melons and Citrons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the melons

  1. Gather the glass melons and citrons when nearly ripe.

  2. Peel them thin and scrape out all the seeds.

  3. Cut baskets or edge the halves with a scallop or point.

  4. Place them in a pot with enough water to cover, add peach leaves and alum.

  5. Boil for 1 hour, then let cool.

  6. Boil in clear water for another 30 minutes.

Make the syrup and candy

  1. Make a syrup with 1¼ pounds of sugar and 1 pint of water.

  2. Boil the syrup.

  3. Add the melons to the syrup and cook until clear.

  4. Remove the melons.

  5. Add lemon peel and ginger to the syrup.

  6. When thick, pour the syrup over the melons.

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. Melon + peachtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together65 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  2. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  4. Peach + gingertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together218 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Peach + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together947 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Forms the thick syrup that preserves the melon and makes it sweet and candied.
Alum
Firms the melon flesh so it holds its shape during long boiling.
Glass melons
Provide the main body of the candied pieces once peeled and seeded.
Citrons
Add firm, pale flesh that candies into translucent pieces.

The step that matters

Cooking the melons in syrup until clear. Cook gently until the pieces turn translucent. Sugar must slowly replace the water in the flesh; boiling too hard can toughen or break the pieces before they are fully candied.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against melon, peach, 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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