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Watermelon Preserves

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Watermelon Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Remove the green rind from the watermelon and cut it into 2-inch pieces.

  2. Weigh the rinds and soak them in cold water.

  3. Add ½ teaspoon of coarse sea salt and ½ teaspoon of pulverized alum to the rinds and let them dissolve.

  4. Fill a kettle with cold water and place it on the stove to slowly reach boiling point, covering with a large plate to keep the rinds submerged.

  5. Boil the rinds until they can be easily pierced with a fork, then drain them.

  6. Bruise and tie 4 ounces of ginger root in a muslin bag and boil it in 2-3 pints of water until strongly flavored.

  7. In another pan, boil 3-4 sliced lemons in a little water until tender.

  8. Make a syrup using the sugar and the water from boiling the lemons and ginger root.

  9. Add the drained rinds and lemon slices to the syrup and boil slowly for 30-45 minutes.

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

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

  2. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Ginger and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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 lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Orangefits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Vanillafits less well

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

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