Santa Claus melon
Cucumis melo · Melon
Top 10 pairings
The Santa Claus or Christmas melon is a large, elongated winter melon with a green, dark-striped rind and mild, pale green honeydew-like flesh. Famous above all for how long it keeps, it belongs to the smooth-skinned Inodorus group of Cucumis melo, stores for weeks to months, and — because a summer-harvested fruit can still be sound at Christmas — it reaches Northern-Hemisphere markets in the depths of winter, eaten chilled in wedges, cubed into fruit salad, and paired with cured ham.
Picking a good onedrag
Hard, pale, no giveSlack, weeping, sour
Firm, gold comingBuy itCubes and balls cleanly — fruit salad, skewers, wedges with serrano ham. Keeps weeks yet.
Rind colourDeep green ground, gold coming up in the mottling
The two endsStub dry and corky, blossom end springs back
Weight in the handHeavy for its size, dense and solid
Smell at the blossom endNothing, or the barest cucumber-green up close
What you get from one
60%
Edible part
about three-fifths · thick rind and seed cavity out · casaba's figure
2733 g
Weight each
each one
Keeping ittap a temperature
Below 7 °C the rind pits and darkens in patchy lesions and it stops ripening — a cool larder, not the fridge. The riper the melon, the more cold it takes.
90–95%
Humidity
Open, uncovered
Airflow