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PALACE SWEETMEATS (for Dessert)
Take any quantity of freshly-candied peel or citron, from which the sugar has been carefully removed, and cut it into broad strips. Put these on a fork or silver skewer, and dip them into some liquid barley-sugar, then place them on a dish, which has been well oiled, being careful that the pieces do not touch, and let them remain until cold. These sweetmeats are easily made, and are much liked. They should be stored in a tin box, with white paper between each layer; and when served should be neatly piled on a dish, and garnished with leaves. Probable cost, 1s. 2d. per pound. Sufficient, a quarter of a pound for a dish.
A two-ingredient confection that lives or dies on the sugar. Everything here depends on getting the barley sugar to the right stage and working fast before it sets.
- What barley sugar isA hard clear candy, originally boiled with a barley-water infusion, though by the nineteenth century it was often made from plain sugar with a little cream of tartar or glucose to stop it graining. "Liquid barley-sugar" means the syrup still molten in the pan, not a bottled product.
- The temperature that mattersBoil the syrup to hard crack, 300-310F (150-155C), and use a thermometer. Below that the coating stays tacky and the peel weeps; above it the sugar darkens and turns bitter.
- Working timeMolten sugar sets in a minute or two. Stand the pan in a bowl of hot water, or over the lowest possible heat, to keep it fluid while you dip, and have the oiled dish ready before you start.
- "Sugar carefully removed"Commercial candied peel is often sold rolled in crystallised sugar or packed in heavy syrup. Rinse briefly in warm water and dry the strips thoroughly on a cloth; any surface moisture will make the hot sugar spit and cloud.
- CitronA large thick-rinded citrus whose peel is candied for baking. Candied orange or lemon peel works in the same way; supermarket mixed peel is cut too fine for broad strips.
- Oiling the dishA neutral oil on marble, a silicone mat, or baking parchment. Butter contains water and milk solids and will pit the sugar shell.
- StorageThe tin and the interleaved paper are doing real work: hard sugar picks up atmospheric moisture and goes sticky within a day in a humid kitchen. Keep the tin sealed and away from steam, and expect a few days at best rather than weeks.
- GarnishVictorian dessert dishes were dressed with laurel, bay or vine leaves. Bay is fine; cherry laurel is not, being cyanogenic, so use a leaf you can identify or none at all.
- YieldA quarter-pound (about 115 g) to a dish, which is what the book gives as sufficient.
Cassell's places this among the small hard confections that closed a Victorian dinner, set out on the table with dried fruits, nuts and ices at the dessert course rather than served as a pudding. Barley sugar itself is much older than the book: the name is generally traced to a French sucre d'orge boiled with barley water, and it survived into the nineteenth century as both a children's sweet and a chemist's lozenge for coughs. Candied citron and orange peel were imported goods, and so modest a quantity makes a whole dish. The instruction to use a silver skewer is a reminder of what a well-equipped household had lying about; the dish is essentially a way of turning a small amount of costly peel into something that looks like a great deal more.