No. 3677

Melon Marmalade or Jam

Marmelade de Melon

Suppress all the rind and seeds from the fruit and rub this through a sieve. If very sweet a quarter of a pound of sugar will suffice for each pound of pulp; reduce the marmalade in a copper pan until it covers the skimmer and drops from it in beads, then pour it into glasses.

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For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Ranhofer assumes a professional preserving kitchen and gives no weights beyond the sugar ratio, no times and no yield. The gaps are easy to fill.

The hinge: melon has almost no pectinUnlike currants or apples, melon sets only by evaporation, so this is a long, patient reduction rather than a quick boil. Expect it to take an hour or more for a few pounds of pulp, though the time varies widely with the melon's water content and the width of the pan, and stir often once it thickens because it scorches readily.
"Covers the skimmer and drops from it in beads"The reduced pulp coats the back of a skimmer or spoon and falls in heavy drops rather than running off thin. This is a visual doneness test; the usual modern jelly point of about 220F at sea level is a rough equivalent.
Add acidMelon is low in acid and the finished jam can taste flat and cloying without it. Ranhofer calls for none; modern melon jam recipes generally add lemon juice, roughly the juice of one lemon per 2 lb of pulp, which also helps whatever trace pectin is present.
The copper panAn unlined copper preserving pan conducts evenly and is genuinely useful here, but acidic fruit should never be left standing in it once the heat is off. A wide stainless or enamelled pan works as well; width matters more than metal, since the whole job is evaporation.
Sugar ratioA quarter pound of sugar per pound of pulp is very low by preserving standards, and it is the reason this keeps poorly. Ripe cantaloupe or muskmelon will take that; a bland or underripe melon wants closer to half a pound per pound.
"Pour it into glasses"Jelly glasses of this period were commonly covered with paper or sealed with paraffin. Treat this as a refrigerator jam instead: hot into clean jars, cooled, capped, and used within a few weeks. Melon is too low in acid for shelf storage without a tested, current canning procedure.
YieldA 3 lb melon yields roughly 2 lb of sieved pulp, which reduces to something near two half-pint jars.
SievingRubbing raw melon through a sieve is slow work; a food mill or a brief cook to soften the flesh first makes it far quicker without changing the result.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer compiled The Epicurean (1894) out of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and the preserves chapter reads like a French confiseur's notebook transplanted whole: each entry numbered, each written for someone who already knows what a copper pan and a skimmer are for. Melon jam belongs to a southern French tradition -- Provence has long candied and preserved melon, and the confectioners of Apt are still known for it -- where a fruit too watery to eat past its season was pushed instead toward sugar. The word marmelade here carries its older, broader French sense of any fruit pulp cooked down with sugar, not the citrus-peel preserve the English word came to mean; Ranhofer's neighbouring entries for fig and orange marmalade and Bar-le-Duc currant jelly show the same continental frame of reference, aimed at a New York clientele that expected its hotel table to look French.