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Ginger Drops
Mix one ounce of ground ginger with one pound of sifted sugar, and put it into a saucepan with a cupful of water; add two ounces of freshly-candied orange, pounded in a mortar, with a little sugar. Boil gently, stirring all the time, until the syrup snaps when put into cold water. Dip the pan into cold water for a minute, then pour the mixture out in drops, on writing paper, or on an oiled slab. A little butter may be thrown in if the syrup boils too quickly; or a little lemon-juice, or any other acid, if it is in danger of graining. Time, a quarter of an hour. Probable cost, 8d.
A boiled-sugar sweet at the hard-crack stage, flavoured with ground ginger and candied orange. The whole recipe turns on one judgement: the cold-water test.
- The snap test in degrees"Snaps when put into cold water" is the hard-crack stage, 300-310F (149-154C). A thermometer clipped to the pan is more reliable than dropping syrup into a glass, though the water test is a good confirmation. Below about 295F the drops will be chewy and sticky rather than brittle.
- QuantitiesOne pound of sifted sugar is roughly 2 1/4 cups; a cupful of water is about 8 fl oz, which is generous and simply means a longer boil. One ounce of ground ginger is around five tablespoons, an assertive amount by modern taste; half that gives a warm rather than fiery drop.
- "Freshly-candied orange"Candied orange peel, made or bought recently enough to still be soft. Pounding it with a little sugar in a mortar keeps it from clumping; a food processor with a spoonful of the weighed sugar does the same job. Older, dried-out peel will not break down and leaves hard flecks.
- Stirring, and when to stopStir only until the sugar has dissolved. Once the syrup is boiling, further stirring encourages crystallisation, which is exactly the "graining" the recipe warns about. Wash any crystals down from the sides of the pan with a wet brush instead.
- Acid and butterThe lemon juice is an interfering agent: it inverts a little of the sucrose and prevents grain. A teaspoon added at the start is more useful than a rescue attempt later. The butter is there chiefly to knock down a boil-over.
- Dipping the panA minute in cold water halts the cooking so the syrup stops climbing in temperature while you work. Do not leave it longer, or the mass stiffens in the pan before it can be dropped.
- Writing paper and slabsPeriod writing paper was hard-sized and unabsorbent; modern printer paper is not a good substitute. Use a silicone mat, a lightly oiled marble slab, or baking parchment, and pipe from the pan lip or a warmed metal spoon.
- Yield and keepingPerhaps 60 to 80 small drops from this quantity. They pick up moisture quickly and go tacky in a day if left open, so cool them completely, dust with a little icing sugar and store airtight with a desiccant or in a dry cupboard.
- Time and costA quarter of an hour is the boiling time only; allow 30 to 40 minutes overall. Eightpence was the probable household cost at the time of writing, in the later nineteenth century.
Ginger drops belong to a large family of Victorian boiled sugars that a cook made at home rather than buying. Ground ginger was one of the cheapest and most widely stocked spices in the nineteenth-century British kitchen, and it carried a reputation as a digestive and warming remedy, which is part of why so many ginger sweets, lozenges and cordials appear in domestic manuals alongside the puddings. The candied orange points at the other half of the pantry: citrus peel was preserved in sugar as a matter of thrift when oranges came into season, and having a jar of it on hand is assumed rather than explained. The pricing in pence is a standing feature of the book, a reminder that it was written with a household budget in mind.