Melon and Banana Jam
Start the night before: tossed with sugar and left overnight, the melon weeps its juice and turns translucent, so the jam sets up amber and syrupy instead of collapsing into mush. Don’t skip this maceration step – it does the heavy lifting.
This is an unusual, almost tropical preserve, where the honeyed sweetness of melon meets the creamy density of banana. The lemon pulls double duty: its juice supplies the acid that balances all that sweetness and helps the mixture thicken (bananas and melon have almost no acid of their own), while paper-thin rounds of zest lend the jar a faint, fragrant bitterness.
Small tricks that matter
- Use a ripe but not overripe melon – watery flesh makes a runny jam you’ll boil forever to reduce.
- Add the bananas near the end; simmered too long they dissolve completely and you lose the pieces.
- That vodka-soaked paper disc laid on top, then the lid: an old home-canning guard against surface mold on low-acid jams.
Store somewhere cool and dark. It’s especially good spread on mild cheese or plain, unsweetened rolls.
Part of Ukrainian cuisine — 464 more recipes in the section.
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Ingredients
Instructions
Wash the melon, peel it, and cut it into 4 pieces. Cut off the rind, remove the seeds and stringy parts, and cut into small pieces.
Put the melon in a large bowl together with the sugar, cover with a cloth, and leave overnight.
Transfer everything to a pot, add the juice of one lemon, and stir. Cook over low heat for about 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, wash the second lemon, pat it dry, and cut it into very thin rounds. Peel the bananas and cut them into rounds.
Add the lemon and bananas to the melon and cook everything over medium heat until the fruit becomes soft (almost like a puree). Then raise the heat and cook until the jam thickens.
When it is ready, remove from the heat, skim off the foam, and let it cool.
Spoon into sterilized jars. Cover the jam inside each jar with a round, porous paper disc soaked in vodka, and only then close with a lid.
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