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Dessert

Melon Pie

A baked pie made from stewed melon, tartaric acid or lemon, butter, and spices, without a crust.

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

Melon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pare and stew the melon like pumpkin.

  2. Add tartaric acid or chopped lemon, butter, and spices.

  3. Bake without a crust.

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. Melon + pumpkintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Lemon + pumpkintop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together600 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Butter + pumpkintop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Melon
Forms the bulk of the filling and supplies moisture and natural sweetness.
Tartaric acid or lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet melon flavor.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, smoother texture.

Swap the pumpkin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (melon, lemon, butter):

  1. Blackberryfits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Pumpkinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against melon, lemon, butter. 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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