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Sugar Melon and Pineapple Jam

A jam made by boiling chopped pineapple and sugar melon with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and melon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 114 recipes. Both carry methyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Sugar Melon and Pineapple Jam

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the pineapple and sugar melon in a pot.

  2. Add ½ lb of sugar to the fruit and boil slowly for about 2 hours.

  3. Add the remaining ½ lb of sugar.

  4. Boil for an additional 1½ 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.

  1. Pineapple + melontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together114 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  2. Pineapple + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + melontop 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

Pineapple
Supplies tart, bright flavour and fruit body to the jam.
Sugar melon
Makes up most of the fruit bulk and gives the jam its main texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the jam by binding water.

The step that matters

Adding the sugar in two portions during the long boil. Sugar-rich fruit can scorch on the base of the pot during a long, slow boil. Sugar also helps the jam thicken and set, so the cook should keep the boil steady and not let it burn.

Swap the melon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Bananafits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Melonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, sugar. 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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