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Preserve

Water-melon Preserves

A preserve made from watermelon or cantaloupe rind, soaked in lime and alum water, then cooked in sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lime and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,289 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Water-melon Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rinds

  1. In a bucket of cold water, add two handfuls of lime.

  2. Cut the rinds of the watermelon or cantaloupe and soak them in the lime-water for 24 hours, turning them often.

  3. Remove the rinds from the lime-water and soak them in clear water, changing the water frequently to remove the lime.

  4. Scald the rinds in strong alum-water with grape or butter bean leaves, keeping the vessel covered for a good green color.

  5. Boil the rinds in this mixture for about 10 minutes, then drop them in cold water.

  6. Boil the rinds in strong ginger tea, ensuring it covers the rinds well to impart flavor.

Make the syrup and finish

  1. Weigh the rind as soon as it is cut.

  2. Make a syrup using 2 pounds of white sugar and 1 pound of rind, with enough water to boil the rinds until perfectly transparent.

  3. Do not add the fruit until the syrup boils, then cook slowly.

  4. Add sliced lemon for improvement, or lemon oil after removing from heat.

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. Lime + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

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

  2. Lime + gingertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,621 recipes

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

  3. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  4. Melon + grapetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together126 recipes

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

  5. Ginger + teatop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together216 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lime
Lime water softens the rinds so they can be cooked and absorb syrup.
White sugar
Sugar forms the syrup that preserves the rinds and makes them sweet and transparent.
Watermelon or cantaloupe rinds
The rinds are the main preserved ingredient, becoming tender and translucent in syrup.

The step that matters

Cook the rinds in syrup until transparent. Cooking slowly lets sugar gradually replace the water in the rind, making it clear and firm; boiling too hard can toughen or break the pieces.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lime, melon, grape, ginger, tea, sugar):

  1. Mangofits better
  2. Orangefits about as well
  3. Pineapplefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lime, melon, grape, ginger, tea, sugar. 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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