I’ve never head of watermelon molasses before, and neither had Rachel Robinson before she ran across it in an old Lutheran cookbook and decided to try it. It doesn’t sound like anything I’ll be experimenting with anytime soon though:

Once cooled and in the jar (a one-quart yield exactly), the stuff had the purple-red depth of a massive garnet. The stink of the whole operation still clung to the air, a puzzling approximation of the invisible cloud of scent a big field of squash, beans, and tomatoes give off when baking in the August sun.

The watermelon molasses confounded me. It was highly sweet and didn’t taste or smell of watermelon but of overcooked monster patty-pan squash.