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Melon, Preserved
Pare some middle-sized, not over-ripe, melons--they are better than large ones for this preserve--take out the pulp and seeds, from which press the juice. Wash the melons, and add the water to the juice to be reserved for making syrup. Divide the melons into eight pieces, lengthwise, and soak them for twenty-four hours in cold water, in which has been put salt and vinegar, allowing two tea-spoonfuls of white vinegar and one of salt to about every half gallon of water. Let the fruit be well covered and then drained; have ready a syrup made with the juice from pulp and seeds, boil a pound of good loaf sugar with every half-pint of the water, and let it grow cold. Put the pieces of melon into an enamelled pan with the cold syrup, make it gradually hot, and when ready to boil simmer and skim for about twelve or fifteen minutes, when the fruit should be put into a bowl carefully, and the syrup thrown over. For three successive days pour off the syrup, and boil for two minutes on the third and last day. Add an ounce of bruised ginger, arrange the melon in large wide-mouthed glass bottles, pour the syrup over, and when cold tie down with bladder. Time, a quarter of an hour to boil the syrup.
A Victorian candied-fruit preserve: firm melon drawn slowly through a heavy syrup over several days rather than boiled once into jam. The technique is sound, but the measures, vessels and sealing all need translating.
- The hinge: gradual sugar, never a hard boilThe melon goes into cold syrup and is warmed slowly, and the syrup is drained and re-poured over three days. That staged approach lets sugar move into the flesh by osmosis without collapsing it. Boil it hard at any point and you get shreds in syrup instead of translucent, firm pieces.
- Which melonCassell's wants a middle-sized, not over-ripe fruit; the only reason it gives is that middle-sized melons suit this preserve better than large ones, though very ripe melon is watery and collapses. A firm, barely ripe cantaloupe or honeydew works; watermelon rind, pared of all green and pink, is another classic candidate and holds its shape well.
- Loaf sugarRefined sugar sold in a hard cone, broken and crushed for use. Ordinary granulated white sugar is the direct replacement, weight for weight — about 2 1/4 cups per pound.
- Half-pint and half-gallonThis is an imperial book: a half-pint is 10 fl oz (1 1/4 US cups), a half gallon is 80 fl oz (about 2.3 litres). So the syrup is roughly 1 lb sugar to 1 1/4 cups liquid — a very heavy syrup, which is the point.
- The salt-and-vinegar soakTwo teaspoons vinegar and one of salt in 80 fl oz of water is far too dilute to preserve anything; it is there to firm the flesh and draw out water before candying. Drain the fruit well before it goes into the syrup.
- Enamelled panNineteenth-century shorthand for non-reactive. Use stainless steel or enamelled cast iron; bare copper, aluminium or cast iron will discolour the syrup and pick up a metallic edge from the vinegar.
- Bruised gingerWhole dried ginger root, smashed with the flat of a knife or a rolling pin so it releases flavour without disintegrating. An ounce is about 30 g. Fresh ginger is not the same thing here — it is milder and wetter. Fish the pieces out before bottling if you do not want the heat to keep building.
- Bladder, and how to store it nowA pig's bladder tied wet over the jar mouth shrank as it dried into a rigid cover. Use lidded jars instead — but note this is not a tested canning procedure and there is no heat processing here. Treat it as a refrigerator preserve: cool, cover, chill, and use within a few weeks, or follow a current tested recipe if you want shelf storage.
- Yield and useUse -- The recipe gives no quantities or yield. Serve it drained and rolled in sugar as a sweetmeat, or with cold meats, in a trifle, or chopped into cake batter.
Preserved melon with ginger belongs to a long line of British attempts to imitate the preserved green ginger imported from China, which arrived in stoneware jars and cost accordingly; melon, cucumber and marrow were all candied in ginger syrup as domestic substitutes. Cassell's compiled this dictionary for late-Victorian households in which melons were a glasshouse and frame crop, ripening all at once and worth the trouble of putting up. The three-day method it describes works on the familiar candying principle, scaled down for a home kitchen: repeated soaking in syrup, so the sugar replaces the water in the fruit gradually rather than shocking it. It is the same principle behind glace cherries and candied peel, and the reason the finished pieces should look faintly translucent rather than cooked.