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Cherries, Dried
Stone the cherries carefully without spoiling the fruit. This may be done by pushing the stones through the end with a bodkin or silver skewer. Put them into a preserving-pan, and strew amongst them finely-sifted sugar, allowing eight ounces of sugar to every pound of fruit. Simmer for ten minutes, then pour them into a bowl, and leave them until next day, when they must be again simmered for ten minutes; and this process must be repeated for three days. Drain well, put them on a sieve or wire tray, so that they do not touch each other, and place this in an oven sufficiently cool to dry without baking them. They must be turned about every now and then that they may be equally dried. If the oven is too hot, their colour will be spoilt. When dried, keep them in tin boxes with writing-paper between each layer. Kentish cherries are best for this purpose. They will be found useful for garnishing dishes, or for dessert. Probable cost of the cherries, 3d. to 6d. per pound.
This is candied cherries by the old slow method: three days of brief simmers in syrup, then a long dry in barely-warm air. Nothing here is difficult, but the sugar ratio and the drying temperature do all the work.
- The hinge: keep the oven barely warmThe hinge: keep the oven barely warm. "Sufficiently cool to dry without baking" gives no figure; modern low-drying practice would put it somewhere around 120-140F. Most ovens will not go that low; use a dehydrator, or an oven set to its minimum with the door propped on a wooden spoon, and check with a thermometer. The recipe's own warning is the point: too hot and the colour is spoilt.
- Sugar proportionEight ounces to the pound is half the fruit's weight in sugar, which is the whole preservation strategy. Cutting it back gives soft, damp cherries that will mould in the tin.
- Why three days of ten-minute simmersEach short boil drives a little more sugar into the fruit while the overnight rest lets it equalise. A single long boil would collapse the cherries to jam; the staged method keeps them whole and plump.
- StoningA bodkin is a blunt thick needle; a sturdy hairpin or an olive-pitter with the plunger removed does the same job of pushing the stone out through the end without splitting the fruit. Silver and other non-reactive metals were commonly preferred for acid fruit, though the book gives no reason for the choice.
- Kentish cherriesIn period usage this generally indicates a tart red cherry of the Kentish Red type, comparable to a Morello or Amarelle rather than a modern sweet Bing, though Kent grew sweet dessert cherries in quantity too. Sour varieties are usually reckoned to hold their shape and colour better in syrup. Morello or Montmorency are the closest substitutes.
- Preserving-panA wide, shallow, unlined copper or heavy brass pan. Any wide heavy saucepan or preserving pan works; the width matters more than the metal, since it lets syrup evaporate evenly.
- Knowing when they are dryFinished cherries should be leathery and tacky but not wet, with no juice when pressed. Pack them loosely and check the tin after a week for beads of moisture; if any appear, dry them further before storing.
- Storage and paperWriting-paper here is just plain paper used to interleave the layers so they do not stick. Use parchment, and keep the tin somewhere cool and dark. Properly dried and sugared, they keep for months.
Candied and dried fruit was a luxury of the still-room long before it was a shop item, and staged steeping in syrup of this kind was used for a range of fruits, citron and angelica among them, in English houses well before the Victorian period. Cassell's is writing when Kent supplied London with cherries in enormous quantity for a few weeks each summer; by tradition the county's commercial orchards are traced to plantings made at Teynham for Henry VIII in the 1530s. The stated cost of threepence to sixpence a pound marks these as a cheap glut fruit being turned into something that would keep until Christmas, which is why a household dictionary of cookery bothered to print the method rather than telling the reader to buy a box of glace cherries.