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Dessert

Princess Melon

A chilled dessert made from stewed apples, cream, cherries, and spices, molded into a melon shape.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,287 recipes. Both carry 4-methoxybenzaldehyde, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Princess Melon

Ingredients

Directions

Make the apple base

  1. Peel the apples and slice them.

  2. In a stew-pan, combine apples, water, lemon peel, lemon juice, sugar, cinnamon, and bay leaves.

  3. Bring to a boil.

  4. Simmer until tender.

  5. Color with a few drops of carmine.

  6. Strain the mixture through a tammy.

  7. Freeze the strained mixture until it reaches a batter-like consistency.

  8. Fold in the whipped cream.

  9. Refreeze the mixture.

Assemble the melon

  1. Line a melon mold with the mixture, about 1 inch thick.

  2. Sweeten 1 pint of cream with 3 ounces of castor sugar.

  3. Flavor the cream with vanilla essence.

  4. Add halved cherries to the cream and mix the cherries into the cream.

  5. Fill the center of the mold with the prepared cream.

  6. Freeze until dry.

  7. Fasten the mold.

Freeze and serve

  1. Place the mold in the ice cave for 2½ to 3 hours, turning occasionally.

  2. Dip the mold in cold water.

  3. Turn out the melon onto a border of ice on a dish.

  4. Garnish with small assorted shapes of cream-ice and sprigs of maiden-hair fern.

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. Cinnamon + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  2. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  4. Apple + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,501 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Cooking apples
Break down when simmered to form the smooth fruit base of the ice.
Heavy cream
Adds fat and richness, and freezing it softens the texture of the ice.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and lowers the freezing point so the ice stays scoopable.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the apples.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the cream filling and dissolves smoothly into it.

The step that matters

Freeze the strained mixture to a batter-like consistency before folding in the cream. Partly freezing the base gives it a thick, spreadable texture; if it is too liquid or too solid, the whipped cream will not fold in evenly and the mold will not hold its shape.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar, cinnamon, cream, vanilla):

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, cinnamon, cream, vanilla. 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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