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Dessert

Another Water-melon Preserve

A preserve made from watermelon rinds, brine, water, alum, ginger tea, sugar, and sliced ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and tea work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 216 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Another Water-melon Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rinds

  1. Prepare the watermelon rinds and soak them in brine for 2-3 days.

  2. Soak the rinds in fresh cold water.

  3. Make the rinds brittle by boiling them in very weak alum water.

  4. Boil the rinds in strong ginger tea.

Sweeten and cook

  1. For every pound of rind, add 1½ pounds of sugar and sliced ginger for flavoring.

  2. Drain the fruit before placing it in the kettle.

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. Ginger + teatop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together216 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

  3. Tea + sugartop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,204 recipes

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

Ginger and sugar 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 rinds
Form the bulk of the preserve, becoming tender and translucent as they cook in syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and helps preserve it by drawing out moisture and thickening the syrup.
Alum
Firms the rind texture so it stays crisp rather than turning mushy during boiling.
Sliced ginger
Adds a warm, aromatic flavor that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Boil the rinds in weak alum water to make them brittle. Alum strengthens the pectin network in the rind, so it stays firm through later cooking. Using alum water that is too strong or boiling too long can make the rind harsh or tough, so the concentration and timing matter.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerthe original
  3. Nutmegfits less well
  4. Peppermintfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against tea, sugar. 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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