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Dessert

Watermelon Preserves

Preserves made from watermelon rind, sugar, spices, and lemon, boiled until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Watermelon Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rind

  1. Peel the watermelon rind and remove all red or pink parts.

  2. Cut the rind into pieces about 1½ inches by 1 inch.

  3. Measure the rind to ensure you have 1 gallon.

  4. Place the rind in a large pot with 1 teaspoon of coarse sea salt and enough cold water to cover.

  5. Boil the rind until it is half tender, testing with a toothpick.

  6. Drain the rinds in a colander for at least 2 hours.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. In the same pot, combine 8 cups of sugar and 1 cup of water.

  2. Boil while stirring until the sugar is fully dissolved and a thick syrup forms.

  3. Add the lemon (sliced with peel), cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and ginger to the syrup.

  4. Add the drained melon rinds and boil until the rinds are tender and the juice is thick.

Seal

  1. Seal the preserves in glass 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Watermelon rind
Provides the bulk of the preserve and, once simmered in syrup, becomes tender and translucent.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and thickens the syrup, helping it set as it cooks down.
Lemon
Adds acidity and brightness that balance the sweetness of the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the rind until half tender before syrup. Parboiling the rind softens its dense structure so it can absorb syrup evenly. Cooking it fully before the sugar stage would overcook it and make it mushy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar, clove, 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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