Home › Canning And Preserving › Preserved Melon Rind
Preserved Melon Rind
Pare and cut in strips the rind of ripe melons. Soak in alum water to cover, allowing two teaspoons powdered alum to each quart of water. Heat gradually to boilingpoint and cook slowly ten minutes. Drain, cover with icewater, and let stand two hours; again drain, and dry between towels. Weigh, allow one pound sugar to each pound of fruit, and one cup water to each pound of sugar. Boil sugar and water ten minutes. Add melon rind, and cook until tender. Remove rind to a stone jar, and cover with syrup. Two lemons cut in slices may be cooked ten minutes in the syrup.
A straightforward sugar preserve of the sort that turned the least usable part of a summer melon into a winter sweetmeat. Nothing here is difficult, but two of the ingredients — alum and a stone jar — need translating before you start.
- Which melonThe recipe says only "ripe melons"; watermelon rind is the likeliest reading, and muskmelon and citron melon rind were used the same way. Pare off all the hard green skin and trim away every trace of pink flesh; only the pale, firm layer between the two should go into the pot, cut in strips as directed.
- AlumFood-grade potassium alum, sold in the spice aisle as pickling alum. It is a firming agent that keeps the rind crisp through long cooking, and it is used at exactly the stated rate — 2 teaspoons per quart of water — because more turns the fruit bitter and astringent and is a gastric irritant. Do not substitute alum-containing baking powder.
- The soak is the hingeThe alum bath, the ten-minute simmer and the two hours in ice water work together to firm the rind so it stays translucent rather than collapsing in the syrup. Omitting the ice water makes soft, broken pieces more likely.
- Weigh, don't guessThe proportions are by weight for a reason: 1 lb sugar to 1 lb drained rind, and 1 cup water per pound of sugar.
- "Cook until tender"The recipe sets no time here. Cook slowly and uncovered until the pieces are translucent all the way through and the syrup has thickened. Rushing it at a hard boil sets the outside and leaves the centres chalky.
- Stone jarA glazed stoneware crock, which is what a nineteenth-century pantry had. Use glass jars instead; old glazes can leach lead and are a poor bet with an acidic syrup.
- Keeping itThis is written for a cool cellar and short-term use, not for shelf storage. Melon is low-acid, and the recipe gives no processing time or temperature, so refrigerate the filled jars and eat within a few weeks — or follow a current tested recipe for watermelon rind preserves if you want them sealed and shelf-stable.
- The lemonsWorth doing. Beyond flavour, the acid helps invert some of the sugar so the syrup is less likely to crystallise in the jar. Slice them thin and leave the slices in the finished preserve.
Preserved melon rind belongs to a long tradition of thrift preserving, in which the peels, cores and rinds that came off the table were candied in heavy syrup rather than thrown out — the same logic that produced candied citron peel, marrow jam and green tomato sweet pickle. Watermelon rind preserves are especially associated with the American South, where they remain a standard summer put-up, but they appear in New England and mid-Atlantic manuscript cookbooks throughout the nineteenth century. Fannie Farmer is often said to have included it in the 1896 Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, a period when the sweet-pickle and preserve shelf was expected to carry a household through the winter, and when alum was an ordinary pantry chemical, sold by the druggist and used freely for crisping pickles.