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Oranges, Coloured, for Dessert
Crush to powder three or four ounces of doubly-refined sugar. Pour over it a few drops of prepared cochineal, and move the sugar about with the fingers until it is all equally coloured, then put the dish which contains it on the fender until it is quite dry. Peel half a dozen ripe oranges, free them entirely from the thick white skin and thready parts, but be careful not to pierce the fruit itself. Roll the oranges in the coloured sugar, arrange them neatly on a dish, and garnish with sprigs of myrtle. Time, a quarter of an hour to dry the sugar. Probable cost, 6d. Sufficient for six persons.
A Victorian dessert-course conceit rather than a cooked dish: whole peeled oranges rolled in pink sugar. Almost all the technique is in the peeling and in getting the sugar to stick.
- Doubly-refined sugarA high grade of refined white sugar, crushed further to a powder. Caster (superfine) sugar is the direct equivalent; 3-4 oz is roughly half a cup.
- Prepared cochinealA liquid red colouring made from the dried cochineal insect, sold ready-diluted by chemists and grocers. Modern carmine or cochineal extract works the same way, as does any liquid red food colour; a few drops is genuinely all it takes, and more will make the sugar clump and stay damp.
- "On the fender"The fender was the metal guard in front of the hearth, so this means a gently warm spot, not heat. Spread the coloured sugar in a thin layer and leave it somewhere warm and dry, or in an oven set no higher than 150F with the door ajar, breaking up lumps with the fingers as it dries.
- The hinge: peel dry, then dampenPeeling -- Remove peel, pith and every thread of membrane with a small sharp knife without cutting into the flesh: juice bleeding from a pierced segment will dissolve the sugar into streaks.
- Choice of fruitThick-skinned navel oranges peel cleanly and hold their shape; thin-skinned juicing oranges tear. Small seedless mandarins are easier still and give a neater result.
- Myrtle garnishSprigs of true myrtle (Myrtus communis) were a standard Victorian dessert-table green and are decorative only, not for eating. Note that several ornamental plants sold as "myrtle" today, including periwinkle (Vinca), are unrelated and toxic; bay or mint leaves are a safer garnish.
- Timing and yieldA quarter of an hour refers only to drying the sugar. The oranges themselves should be sugared shortly before serving, as the coating goes wet and patchy within an hour or two. Six oranges serve six as written, one to a plate, eaten with a knife and fork.
- "Probable cost, 6d"Sixpence for the whole dish, an editorial habit of Cassell's rather than a useful figure now. It suggests imported oranges were cheap enough by this date to be treated casually.
This belongs to the Victorian dessert course, where fruit was served whole and dressed up for the table rather than cooked, and where a great deal of effort went into colour. Cochineal, made from dried scale insects imported from Mexico and the Canaries, was the standard red of the nineteenth-century kitchen and appeared in everything from blancmange to confectioner's sugar; some cheaper reds of the period were poisonous mineral pigments. Cassell's places the recipe among its dessert and dinner-table entries at a moment when Mediterranean oranges were arriving in Britain in bulk by steamer. The myrtle sprigs are the older touch: myrtle was long associated with love and marriage, and it was a conventional table green in the grand dessert arrangements described throughout the period.