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Cantaloupe Preserves

Preserves made from ripe cantaloupes, sugar, and lemons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cantaloupe Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Select ripe cantaloupes, remove the seeds, peel, and slice them.

  2. Add one pound of sugar per pound of rind, and add two lemons for every five pounds of rind.

  3. Cook the mixture immediately; no brine is needed.

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

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

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

Ripe cantaloupes
Supplies the bulk, flavor and body of the preserves.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps preserve it by drawing out water and binding it.
Lemons
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and supports the set.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture immediately. Sugar draws water out of cut fruit, so once it is combined, the mixture should go straight to the heat. Waiting lets the fruit soften and weep before it cooks, which can change the texture of the finished preserves.

“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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