Skip to main content
Dessert

Preserved Melons in Syrup

A method of preserving melons by repeatedly boiling them in a sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Melon and lemon work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 362 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Preserved Melons in Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the melons

  1. Cut the melons into quarters, remove the seeds, and peel off the rinds.

  2. Parboil the melons for 3 minutes, then immerse them in cold water and drain.

  3. Place the melons in an earthen bowl.

Syrup and soaking

  1. In a pot, combine 3 pounds of sugar and 1¼ pounds of water to make a syrup.

  2. Boil the syrup, skim it well, and pour it boiling hot over the melons.

  3. Cover the bowl with a paper cover and let it sit for 24 hours.

  4. The next day, drain the syrup, boil it again, adding more sugar, and boil to a thread.

  5. Let the syrup cool, then pour it over the melons again.

  6. Boil the syrup again the next day to the same degree, skim well, and pour it over the melons hot.

  7. On the following day, boil the syrup to a thick thread, add the melons, and let it boil up twice.

  8. The next day, boil the syrup again to the same degree, add the melons, and let them simmer slowly for 5 minutes.

Jar

  1. Once well skimmed, place the melons in glass jars and cover them tightly when cool.

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 + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together362 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 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).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Loaf sugar
Forms a thick syrup that preserves the melons and sweetens them.
Melons
Provide the fruit that is softened and preserved in the syrup.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup to a thread on each day. Repeatedly reboiling the syrup to a thick thread concentrates the sugar so it preserves the fruit. If the syrup is not brought to the right density, the melons may spoil or ferment in storage.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, melon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, melon. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes