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Dessert

Watermelon Preserves

A preserved condiment made from watermelon rinds, salt, alum, ginger, sugar, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Watermelon Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rinds

  1. Peel and cut the watermelon rinds into pieces.

  2. Soak the rinds in salt water for 24 hours, using enough water to cover and 3 tablespoons of salt.

  3. Soak the rinds again in alum water for 24 hours, using 3 tablespoons of alum.

  4. Soak the rinds in fresh water for another 24 hours.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. In a pot, boil 1 ounce of white ginger root in 1.5 gallons of water until tender.

  2. In a separate pot, make a syrup with 7 pounds of sugar and add the watermelon rinds.

  3. Boil the rinds in the syrup until they are transparent.

  4. Season with cinnamon to taste.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Watermelon rinds
Form the bulk of the preserve and become tender and translucent when cooked in syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, as a syrup, helps the rinds turn clear and firm up.
Alum
Firms the rind tissue so it holds its shape during long soaking and boiling.
White ginger root
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the rinds in the syrup until they are transparent. Cooking too briefly leaves the rinds opaque and firm, while over-boiling can break them down. Sugar gradually replaces water in the rind tissue, which is what makes it look clear.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon. 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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