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Conserve
Rind ½ watermelon Salt 1 lemon 1 C seedless raisins 1 orange ½ box crystalized ginger sugar Cut rind of watermelon fine. Place in salt water for several hours. Drain. Add clear water-cook until tender. Drain well. To equal parts melon rind and sugar add lemon, orange, raisins and ginger. Boil until quite thick.
Blanche Osborne. 1 qt. carrots 3½ C sugar
A church-supper conserve built on the part of the watermelon most people throw away. The transcription is compressed and two of its quantities are genuinely unclear, so read the whole thing before starting.
- The hinge: equal parts by weightThe hinge: "To equal parts melon rind and sugar" — the recipe does not say whether to measure by weight or by volume. Weight, matching the drained cooked rind with the same weight of sugar, is the safer reading for a firm set.
- An ambiguous first line"Rind 12 watermelon" looks like a lost fraction, probably the rind of half a watermelon. It is unlikely to mean twelve melons; the lemon, orange, raisins and ginger would be lost in that volume.
- The ginger box"1½ box crystalized ginger" refers to a period retail package whose size is not recorded. Start with about 4 oz, taste the syrup near the end, and add more.
- Preparing the rindPare off all the dark green skin and every trace of pink flesh, leaving only the pale firm layer, then cut it into small dice or thin strips. Green skin stays tough and bitter no matter how long it cooks.
- The salt waterNo proportion is given; roughly 1/4 cup salt to a quart of water is a common strength in comparable recipes. Several hours firms the rind so it holds its shape; after draining, rinse well or the finished conserve will taste salty.
- Lemon and orangeThe recipe does not say which parts to use; whole fruit, juice plus finely chopped or ground peel, suits a conserve, and the pith carries pectin that helps the set.
- "Boil until quite thick"Roughly 30-45 minutes at a steady boil, stirring often as it thickens; the rind turns translucent and a spoonful dropped on a cold plate should mound rather than run. It stiffens further on cooling, so stop a little short.
- StorageNo sealing instructions are given, which was normal when jars were covered with paraffin. Refrigerate the finished conserve and eat within a few weeks, or process it by a current tested water-bath method.
- The stray last line"1 qt. carrots 3½ C sugar" appears to be the beginning of another recipe caught by the transcription. Ignore it.
- YieldHalf a large melon's rind yields roughly three to four pints, depending on how thick you pare.
Watermelon-rind preserves belong to a long tradition of thrift preserving, in which the peel, core or rind of a fruit was candied rather than composted — the same impulse that produced candied citrus peel and green tomato mincemeat. The word conserve had a specific meaning in American community cookbooks of this period: a jam-like preserve carrying more than one fruit, usually with raisins and citrus, and often nuts. The crystallised ginger here marks it as a slightly ambitious recipe; ginger preserved in sugar was an imported grocery item, sold by the box. Books like this one, sold to raise money for the congregation, preserved exactly this kind of dish — signed with the maker's name, Blanche Osborne, and written for readers assumed to already know how strong to make brine and how thick "quite thick" is.