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Dessert

Preserved Watermelon-rind

A preserved watermelon rind made by boiling rind, lemons, ginger, and sugar, then storing in syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Preserved Watermelon-rind

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rind

  1. Peel the watermelon rind, removing the pink part.

  2. Cut into 1-inch square pieces.

  3. Cover the rind with cold water and add a little coarse sea salt.

  4. Let it sit overnight.

Soak and rinse

  1. Drain the water.

  2. Cover the rind with fresh water, adding a pinch of alum.

  3. Rinse well the next morning.

Cook the lemons and ginger

  1. Slice the lemons and remove the seeds.

  2. Cover with boiling water.

  3. Boil for 30 minutes until tender.

  4. Scrape and slice the ginger thinly.

  5. Boil in a saucepan until tender, about 2 hours.

Make the syrup and cook the rind

  1. Weigh the watermelon rind.

  2. Use ¾ pound of sugar for each pound of rind.

  3. Combine the sugar with 1 cup of boiling water for each pound of sugar in a preserving kettle.

  4. Let it dissolve and come to a gentle boil.

  5. Boil the watermelon rind in boiling water until tender, about 30 to 45 minutes.

  6. Drain the rind.

  7. Squeeze out moisture using a towel.

  8. Lay the pieces on a platter to 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. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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
Forms the bulk of the preserve and becomes tender and translucent as it cooks in syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the rind and, dissolved into syrup, preserves it and gives it body.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the sweet syrup and balances the mild rind.
Green ginger
Adds a sharp, warm aroma and flavour to the syrup and rind.
Alum
Helps the rind stay firm and crisp rather than going soft during cooking.

The step that matters

Rinse well the next morning.. Alum firms the rind's texture, but leftover alum left on the pieces can taste bitter and astringent. Thorough rinsing removes that residue before the rind is cooked in sugar syrup.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Orangefits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Vanillafits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger. 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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