Iced Currants
Wash and drain dry, large bunches of ripe currants, dip into beaten whites of eggs, put on sieve so they will not touch each other, sift powdered sugar thickly over them, and put in a warm place till dry. Cherries and grapes may be prepared in the same way.
This is a Victorian frosted-fruit garnish, and the technique is sound in every respect but one: the coating is raw egg white that is never heated, only dried. That single point rules the recipe out for a modern kitchen.
- The egg white is never cookedDrying in "a warm place" removes moisture but does not pasteurize. Whatever Salmonella is present on the shell or in the white when it goes onto the fruit is still present when the glaze sets, and the fruit is eaten uncooked.
- The drying temperature is the problem, not just the eggThe drying temperature compounds the problem, not just the egg — a "warm place" in a nineteenth-century kitchen meant the back of the range or a plate warmer, and no temperature is specified. Holding a thin protein film warm for however many hours it takes to dry is the opposite of what you want.
- Sugar is not a preservative hereSugar is not doing the preserving here — the sifted sugar sits over a protein layer that is still moist, and it cannot be relied on to make the coating safe. There is no acid, no salt and no heat step anywhere in the method.
- Garnish is still foodFrosted fruit tends to be treated as decoration and left on the table for hours, which extends the hold time further. If you want frosted currants, cherries or grapes for a dessert plate, use a current recipe written for the purpose.
- "Powdered sugar" in this periodWorth knowing for reading the rest of the book: powdered sugar then meant loaf sugar crushed and sifted fine, closer to today's superfine or caster sugar than to modern confectioners' sugar, which contains cornstarch.
- Currants meant fresh redcurrantsNot the dried Zante currants of a fruitcake recipe. Buckeye Cookery assumes garden red or white currants, picked on the strig, which is why the recipe insists on whole large bunches — the stem is the handle.
Frosted or "iced" fruit belonged to the Victorian dessert table, where the last course was arranged as much for looks as for eating: pyramids of fruit, sugared grapes edging a compote, currant bunches glittering on a footed dish. The technique of brushing fruit with egg white and dusting it with sugar is much older than this book, and appears under the heading of "iced" or "frosted" fruits. Red and white currants grew easily in the upper Midwest and ripened in a short glut in early summer, so a recipe that used the handsomest bunches whole for the table was a way of showing off the pick of the crop. The instruction to set them on a sieve so they do not touch is the practical heart of the method.