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Dessert

Watermelon Rind

A preserved watermelon rind soaked, boiled, and coated in a sweet syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Watermelon Rind

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rind

  1. Soak the rind in strong salt water for three days.

  2. Soak the rind in fresh water for one day, changing the water frequently until all salt is extracted.

  3. Boil the rind in fresh water with ginger and powdered alum for about 30 minutes.

  4. Wipe the rind dry with a towel and place it in cold water until the syrup is made.

Syrup and coating

  1. Dry the rind again and pour boiling hot syrup over it, repeating this process for nine mornings.

  2. If the rind is not fully coated, boil for a little while longer.

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. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

Sugar and ginger 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

What each ingredient does

Watermelon rind
Forms the candy itself, becoming tender and translucent as it absorbs the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the rind and, drawn into it over repeated soakings, preserves it.
Powdered alum
Firms the rind's texture so it holds its shape during long boiling and soaking.

The step that matters

Repeated syrup pouring over nine mornings. Sugar must penetrate the rind gradually; pouring syrup too quickly or skipping days leaves the rind under-sweetened and less preserved. Drying the rind before each pour helps the syrup cling and coat it.

“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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