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Dessert

Watermelon Preserves

Preserves made from watermelon rind boiled with sugar, water, lemon skins, and lemon slices.

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 rind

  1. Cut the watermelon in half and remove the soft inside, leaving only the firm white rind.

  2. Scrape off the green outside and cut the rind into desired shapes like hearts or squares.

  3. Boil the rind pieces in enough water to cover them.

  4. Add fresh lemon skins to color the rind pieces yellow.

  5. Once tender, remove the rind pieces.

  6. Let the rind pieces cool in dishes.

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup with 1 pound of sugar and 1 teacup of water for each pound of melon.

  2. Dissolve the sugar in the hot water.

  3. Add the rind pieces and boil until clear.

  4. Add slices of lemon for flavor.

  5. When the rind pieces are transparent, remove them with a skimmer.

  6. Boil the syrup until thick.

Jar

  1. Pour the thick syrup over the rind pieces in jars.

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 rind
Firm white rind is the edible base that becomes tender and translucent when cooked in syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserves and, as the syrup thickens, helps preserve the rind and give it a glossy texture.
Lemon skins
Add a yellow color and aromatic citrus flavor to the rind pieces.

The step that matters

Boil the rind until clear. Rind must be cooked gently until tender and translucent. Cooking too briefly leaves it firm and opaque, while overcooking can make it fall apart.

“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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