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Dessert

To Make Melon Citron

A preserved melon dish made by soaking, syruping, boiling, and storing in a sealed container.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Wine and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,427 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

To Make Melon Citron

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the melon

  1. Cut the melons into quarters and remove the seeds.

  2. Soak the melon quarters in a mixture of salt and water for three days.

  3. Drain the melon quarters.

  4. Wipe the melon quarters and place them in the syrup for 15 minutes.

Make the syrup

  1. Prepare a thin syrup.

  2. Boil the melon quarters in the syrup again for three days.

  3. Add Mountain wine to the syrup.

  4. Add a little brandy to the syrup.

  5. Add more sugar to the syrup.

  6. Clarify the syrup.

  7. Boil the syrup until nearly candied.

Candy and store

  1. Add the melon quarters to the syrup.

  2. Boil the melon quarters in the syrup.

  3. Transfer the melon to glasses.

  4. Cover tightly with bladder and leather.

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. Wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Melon + winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together52 recipes

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

  3. Melon + brandytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together33 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  5. Melon + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together796 recipes

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

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Melons
Form the body of the preserve, becoming tender and translucent as they candy in syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and, as the syrup thickens, preserves the melon and builds its candied texture.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the melon during soaking, firming the flesh before it takes up syrup.
Brandy
Adds aroma and acts as a preservative that helps keep the candied melon stable.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup until nearly candied. Boiling concentrates the sugar so the syrup thickens without crystallising. If it is cooked too little the melon will stay wet and spoil; too far and it turns hard and sticky.

Swap the melon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Melonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, wine, brandy. 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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