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Watermelon or Muskmelon Marmalade
Weigh twelve pounds rind, previously soaked in brine, and the salt extracted by fresh water, parboil, put on with twelve pounds sugar made into a thin syrup, and boil to pieces. Add the peelings of twelve oranges and twelve lemons, previously soaked in water, cut in strips and boiled extremely soft, the water being changed three times while boiling. Stir constantly fromthe bottom with a batter-cake turner. Cook very thick. Put in wide-mouthed glass jars--Mrs. S. T.
A thrift preserve built on the part of the melon most cooks throw away. The quantities are enormous by modern standards and the method assumes an all-day kettle, but the proportions are sound and scale down cleanly.
- Scale it downTwelve pounds of prepared rind is the yield of several large watermelons and will fill a canner many times over. Working at one-quarter or one-sixth scale keeps the 1:1 rind-to-sugar ratio intact and fits an ordinary heavy pot.
- What counts as rindOnly the pale green-to-white layer is used. Pare off every trace of the dark outer skin and all the pink flesh before weighing, or the finished marmalade turns fibrous and dull.
- The brine stepThe original gives no strength or time. A common period practice was a brine strong enough to float an egg, overnight; the salt firms the rind so it holds its shape. Soak in several changes of fresh water afterward until no salt taste remains, or the preserve will be inedible.
- Why the citrus peel is boiled three timesChanging the water three times leaches out the bitterness in the white pith. Skipping it is the surest way to ruin the batch. Boil the strips until a fingernail goes through with no resistance before they join the syrup.
- Thin syrupDissolve the sugar in enough water to make it pourable and bring it to a boil before the rind goes in. The original gives no proportion, and period definitions of 'thin syrup' varied. The rind then candies slowly as the water cooks away.
- Batter-cake turnerA wide flat griddle spatula. The point is to scrape the whole floor of the pot; sugar at this concentration scorches the instant it sticks, and scorched sugar flavours the entire batch.
- How thick is "very thick"Cook to about 220F at sea level, or until a spoonful dropped on a chilled plate wrinkles when pushed. Watermelon rind is low in pectin, so much of the set comes from the citrus peel and from evaporation, and the result tends to be a soft, glossy set rather than a firm jelly.
- Filling the jarsNineteenth-century cooks relied largely on sugar concentration, with jars closed under paper, wax or a tied cover. Use sterilised jars, fill hot with half an inch of headspace, and process in a boiling water bath for ten minutes; otherwise treat it as a refrigerator preserve.
- YieldVery large. Twelve pounds of rind with twelve pounds of sugar, cooked down thick, fills many jars; a quarter batch uses three pounds of rind.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and usually cited as first published in 1878 (John P. Morton, Louisville), with printings following in 1879, is a contributor's book: nearly every receipt carries a set of initials, and "Mrs. S. T." is one of the many Virginia housekeepers who sent hers in. Preserving watermelon rind belongs to a broad Southern habit of using the whole fruit, and it is one of the few sweetmeats in the American repertoire made from what is otherwise compost. Rind takes sugar well precisely because it has so little flavour of its own, which is why the citrus peel is doing most of the work here; marmalade in this period still meant a thick fruit paste rather than specifically a bitter-orange conserve, so the name signals texture as much as ingredient. The scale of the recipe is a reminder that a household putting up preserves in the 1870s was laying in a year's sweets at once, in the weeks when melons were worth nothing at all.