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Canned Watermelon

Canned watermelon pieces simmered in a sugar syrup with ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Canned Watermelon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rind

  1. Cut the rind of the watermelon into small pieces, removing all green parts.

  2. Boil the rind in water until tender enough to pierce with a fork.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. Prepare a syrup with ½ pound of sugar for every pound of fruit.

  2. Skim the melon pieces from the water and place them in the syrup with ginger.

  3. Cook for a few minutes, then put in cans and seal.

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
Provides the bulk of the pieces, becoming tender and translucent when boiled and then simmered in syrup.
White sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, in the syrup, helps preserve it and give it a firm, glossy texture.
Fresh ginger
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour that balances the sweetness of the melon.

The step that matters

Boiling the rind until tender. The rind must be soft enough to pierce with a fork before it goes into the syrup. Undercooked rind stays tough and chewy, while the sugar syrup cannot soften it fully afterwards.

“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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