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Fruit Candies: Boil
CHERRY FOAM Place in a saucepan two cupfuls of granulated sugar, half a cupful of water and a fourth teaspoonful of cream of tartar. Boil until it forms a hard ball. Just before taking the syrup from the fire stir in a cupful of preserved cherries--the clear, transparent kinds are best. Pour the mixture over the stiffly beaten whites of two eggs and beat until light and foamy. Lay whole candied cherries two inches apart on waxed or greased paper and drop the foam by spoonfuls on these, pressing candied cherries on top of each. This candy is not only delicious but pretty to the eye as well.
Select the best quality of figs and steam until soft, then make an incision in each lengthwise and stuff with chopped nut meats. Close and place on a buttered pan. Boil together two cupfuls of sugar, one-half cupful of water, and one-fourth teaspoonful of cream of tartar. Boil until it will make a hard ball when dropped into cold water, flavor with a little vanilla, and then pour over the stuffed figs. When nearly cold mark off into squares, then dip in melted chocolate.
PINEAPPLE MARSHMALLOWS Soak four ounces of gum arabic in one cupful of pineapple juice until dissolved; then strain through cheese-cloth. Put into a saucepan with one-half pound of best powdered sugar and place saucepan in a pan of hot water on the stove. Stir the mixture until it becomes thick and white. Drop a little into cold water, and if it becomes a firm ball, remove from the fire and whip into it the stiffly beaten whites of three eggs. Flavor with a teaspoonful of vanilla. Dust a square pan with corn-starch and pour in the mixture until an inch thick. Let it stand in a cool place for twelve hours, then cut it into inch squares and roll in a mixture of powdered sugar and corn-starch. FRUIT CHOCOLATE BALLS Take one cupful each of dates, seeded raisins and English walnut meats. Pass through a food chopper. Form into balls, and dip into melted chocolate fondant.
Four small confections run together under one heading, three of them built on the same hard-ball syrup. A candy thermometer removes nearly all the guesswork the original leaves in.
- Hard ball, in numbersThe hard-ball stage is 250-265F (121-129C); aim for about 255F for the cherry foam and the fig syrup. The cold-water test the book relies on is workable but imprecise, and a few degrees either side is the difference between foam that sets and foam that weeps.
- Cream of tartar's jobThe quarter teaspoon is not flavouring. It inverts a portion of the sucrose as the syrup boils, which keeps the finished candy from turning grainy. Do not leave it out, and avoid stirring the syrup as it boils, apart from the cherries the recipe has you stir in at the very end.
- Pouring onto the whitesAdd the hot syrup to the beaten whites in a thin, steady stream with the mixer running, not all at once. Poured in a lump it cooks the whites into threads instead of aerating them. Beating continues until the mass holds its shape and loses its gloss, usually five to ten minutes.
- Preserved versus candied cherries"Preserved cherries" here are cherries in heavy syrup, drained well; candied cherries are the dried, sugared kind sold for fruitcake. Both are called for, and they are not interchangeable in this recipe. Drain and blot the preserved fruit or the extra moisture will slacken the foam.
- Gum arabicSold now as food-grade gum arabic or gum acacia, usually as a powder rather than the lumps this recipe assumes. Four ounces is somewhere between two-thirds of a cup and a cup of powder depending on the grind; soaking and straining through cheesecloth is still worth doing, as undissolved specks never disperse later.
- Use canned pineapple juiceFresh pineapple juice contains bromelain, a protease that will slowly break down beaten egg white and leave the marshmallows soupy. Canned or bottled juice has been heated enough to destroy the enzyme.
- Egg whites that are never heatedThe pineapple marshmallow mixture only reaches double-boiler temperature, so the three whites whipped into it afterwards are effectively raw, and the slab then stands twelve hours before cutting. Use pasteurised whites for that one. The cherry foam is better off, since the hot syrup does much of the work, but pasteurised whites are the safer choice there as well.
- Melted chocolate and chocolate fondantFor the figs and the fruit balls, temper real couverture or use a compound coating; chocolate simply melted in a bowl will bloom grey and stay soft. "Chocolate fondant" means fondant with melted chocolate worked into it, thinned over hot water to a dipping consistency.
- WeatherNone of these will set properly on a humid day. Boiled-sugar candy pulls moisture from the air, and the foam in particular will stay tacky.
- YieldRough estimates only, as the book gives no pan size or count: two cupfuls of sugar makes perhaps two dozen drops of cherry foam, or coats around a pound of stuffed figs. Poured an inch thick as directed, the marshmallow mixture would fill something like an eight-inch square pan, which at inch squares gives about five dozen.
Cherry foam belongs to the divinity family, the American beaten-egg-white candies generally associated with the period after cheap granulated sugar and corn syrup became widely available around the turn of the twentieth century; sea foam, divinity and nougat are all variations on hot syrup poured into stiff whites. The pineapple marshmallows are the older technique of the two: marshmallow was originally thickened with mucilage from the root of the marsh mallow plant, and gum arabic, the dried sap of acacia trees imported through the Sudan and Senegal, is often said to have served as a commercial substitute long before gelatine took over the job. That this book pairs gum arabic with pineapple juice says a good deal about the grocery shelves of its day, when canned Hawaiian pineapple was available and home candy making was promoted as both a thrifty amusement and a genteel accomplishment.