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Watermelon Preserves
Chop six pounds of red heart of watermelon, add three pounds of sugar, two sliced lemons, and cook at least two and one-half hours. Raisins, sliced figs and citron may be added in the last half-hour, with a little extract of bitter almond.
— Miss Ruth Hall
An unusual preserve: nearly all nineteenth-century watermelon preserves use the white rind, which holds its shape, while this one uses the red heart, which does not. Expect a soft, jammy conserve rather than translucent cubes.
- The hinge: it has to reduceWatermelon flesh is over 90 percent water, so the long cooking time is not a mistake — it is the whole method. Six pounds of chopped heart will collapse to a thin pink liquid within twenty minutes and only begins to look like preserve in the final hour. Use a wide, heavy pan so evaporation can keep up, and stir often once it thickens, as the sugar will catch.
- Sugar ratioThree pounds of sugar to six pounds of fruit is half the weight of the fruit, low by preserving standards of the day, when pound-for-pound was usual. How well it keeps depends on how far it is reduced; do not assume the sugar alone makes it shelf-stable.
- Bitter almond extractBuy a modern almond extract or a bottle labelled free from prussic acid. Historic bitter almond essence was distilled from the kernels and could carry hydrocyanic acid; what is sold now is benzaldehyde-based and safe. "A little" means a scant quarter teaspoon for this quantity — it is assertive and overdoses easily.
- CitronCandied citron, the peel of Citrus medica, not the citron melon sometimes sold for pickling. It is a Christmas-baking item in most shops. Chop it small; added whole-sliced it stays leathery.
- The lemonsSliced whole, peel and pith included, they supply the pectin and acid the melon lacks. Remove the pips if you want a smoother preserve, or fish out the slices at the end.
- The last half-hour additionsRaisins, figs and citron go in late so they plump without dissolving. They also thicken the mixture noticeably, so judge doneness after they have gone in, not before.
- Yield and keepingYield depends on how far you reduce it, but three pounds of sugar plus the fruit solids will finish at considerably more than three or four half-pint jars. The receipt says nothing about sealing; refrigerate and use within a few weeks, or follow current tested instructions for processing preserves in jars.
Watermelon preserves belong to a family of thrift cookery that treated the melon as two ingredients: the sweet heart for eating out of hand and the pale rind for the preserving kettle. Rind preserves, spiced with clove and ginger, were a fixture of Southern and Pennsylvania German kitchens; a receipt like this one, which throws the red heart into the pan instead, is the exception rather than the rule. The additions — raisins, figs, citron, bitter almond — are in the manner of a late Victorian conserve, in which a plain fruit preserve was dressed up with dried fruit and a bought flavouring extract. Bitter almond was a common way to suggest cherry or marzipan without either, and it turns up in everything from blancmange to fruit cake in books of this vintage. The signed attribution is typical of community cookbooks such as this one, where each receipt carried its contributor's name.