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Dessert

To Preserve Watermelon Rind and Citron

A preserve of watermelon rind made with sugar, water, lemon juice, and alum, simmered and jarred.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

To Preserve Watermelon Rind and Citron

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rind

  1. Layer green vine leaves in a kettle and add pieces of watermelon rind without sugar.

  2. Cover the rind with water and place a thick cloth over the kettle.

  3. Simmer for 2 hours, adding a few bits of alum.

  4. Spread the rind on a dish to cool.

Make the syrup

  1. In a separate pot, melt 1½ pounds of sugar with 1 pint of water and mix in the beaten egg white.

  2. Boil and skim until clear.

  3. Add the cooled rind to the syrup and boil for 2 hours.

  4. Remove the rind and boil the syrup again.

  5. Pour it over the rind and let it sit overnight.

Finish and jar

  1. The next morning, boil the syrup with lemon juice until it thickens enough to hang from a spoon.

  2. Put the rind in jars and pour the syrup over it.

  3. Allow to sit before using.

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).

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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 rind
Forms the preserve's body, becoming tender and translucent as it cooks in syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, as it thickens, helps preserve the rind.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and helps the syrup set.
Egg white
Clarifies the syrup, as its proteins bind impurities that are then skimmed off.

The step that matters

Skimming the syrup until clear. Egg white coagulates as the syrup heats, trapping impurities. Skimming off the foam as it rises leaves a clear syrup; skipping this leaves a cloudy preserve.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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