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Washington Citron-melon Sweetmeats

A preserved sweetmeat made from melons, sugar, and alum, boiled and jarred.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Melon and sugar work together. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 796 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Washington Citron-melon Sweetmeats

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the melon

  1. Place the melon pieces in a preserving kettle and cover with cold water.

  2. Add a little pounded alum and boil until the melons are tender and a beautiful green.

  3. Remove the melons and let them drain.

Make the syrup and jar

  1. Prepare the syrup by clarifying 1 pound of sugar with 1 pound of melon.

  2. Once the syrup is cold, place the melons in jars and pour the boiling syrup over them.

  3. Seal the jars and store in a cool place.

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 + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together796 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

Melon
Forms the main body of the sweetmeats, which soften during boiling and take up the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the melon and, once clarified into syrup, preserves the pieces in the jars.
Pounded alum
Helps the melon pieces firm up and hold their green colour during boiling.

The step that matters

Boiling the melons until tender and green. Alum firms the melon flesh and keeps it green, but boiling must stop when the pieces are tender. Overcooking can make them mushy, while underboiling leaves them firm and pale.

“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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