Name: How to Serve Melons
Ingredients: 1 water-melon; brandy (optional)

Why it works: Melon and brandy work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 33 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

How to Serve Melons

Ingredients

1 water-melon
brandy (optional)

Directions

Prepare

Keep the watermelon in a cool place before serving.
Cut a piece from each end of the melon.
Cut the melon in a zig-zag shape down the center to divide it in half.
Set each half on a dish with a napkin.

Serve

When ready to serve, cut the melon into slices.

Variation

For a variation, cut a plug out of the melon, pour in a glass of brandy, replace the plug, and keep it cool for 24 hours.

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.

Melon + brandytop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together33 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Watermelon (in the method): Supplies the juicy flesh, moisture and natural sweetness that make up the dish.
Brandy: Soaks into the flesh during chilling to add aroma and flavor in the optional variation.

“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.