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Dessert

Watermelon Preserves

Preserves made from watermelon fruit, sugar, lemon, and alum water, boiled and jarred.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Watermelon Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Remove the red part of the watermelon and pare the rinds.

  2. Cut the fruit into 2‑inch pieces and soak in weak alum water for 1 hour or overnight.

  3. Boil the pieces in clear water or steam until a fork pierces them easily.

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup with 1 pound of sugar and enough water to prevent burning.

  2. Skim the syrup.

  3. Add the juice and peeled yellow rind of 1 lemon for every 3 pounds of fruit.

  4. Skim while the syrup is not boiling violently.

  5. Boil the rinds in the syrup for 1 hour or until perfectly clear.

  6. Remove the lemon peel.

Pack and seal

  1. Pack the fruit in jars and fill with boiling syrup.

  2. Seal the jars or tie them up 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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

Watermelon fruit
Provides the bulk of the preserve and its tender, juicy texture once cooked.
White sugar
Forms the syrup that sweetens the fruit and helps preserve it.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aroma; its juice brightens the syrup and its rind adds flavour.
Alum water
Firms the fruit's texture so the pieces hold their shape during cooking.

The step that matters

Boil the pieces until a fork pierces them easily. Cooking the fruit until just tender softens it evenly while keeping its shape; undercooking leaves it firm and uneven, and overcooking makes it collapse into mush.

“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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