Home › The Principles of Cookery › Pink Sugar, for Ornamenting Sweet Dishes
Pink Sugar, for Ornamenting Sweet Dishes
Crush the sugar either coarsely or to a powder, whichever is required. Place two or three drops of prepared cochineal in the palm of the hand, and rub the sugar in with it until it is sufficiently coloured, when it is ready for use.
A one-line preparation that still works exactly as written, though the colouring agent and the sugar itself have both changed since the 1870s.
- Crush the sugarVictorian loaf sugar came as a hard cone that had to be broken and crushed to the grain you wanted. Start instead with granulated sugar for a coarse sparkling sugar, or pulse it briefly in a spice grinder for the finer grade; ready-made caster sugar also takes colour well.
- Prepared cochinealThis was a liquid tincture of cochineal insects sold by grocers and chemists, the ancestor of modern carmine (E120). A liquid red food colouring is the closest substitute. The recipe gives no weight of sugar, only two or three drops of colouring, which implies a small quantity.
- Gel versus liquidModern gel and paste colours are far more concentrated than nineteenth-century tinctures. Use a smear on a toothpick rather than drops, or the sugar will clump and turn magenta.
- Rubbing in the palmThe hand is doing real work here: the warmth and friction distribute the colour without dissolving the crystals. A small bowl and the back of a spoon, or a sealed jar shaken hard, achieve the same thing more hygienically. A glove is worth wearing, as carmine can stain the skin.
- Avoid excess liquidThe hinge of the recipe is keeping the sugar dry. Add colour a drop at a time; too much wets the crystals, they fuse, and you get a damp paste instead of loose tinted sugar.
- Drying and storageSpread the finished sugar on a baking sheet or paper to shed any surface moisture, then break up any lumps. Kept in a sealed jar in the dark it should hold its colour for some time; carmine is known to fade in direct sunlight.
- YieldThe original gives no quantity. Work in small batches — 50 g (about 1/4 cup) is plenty to decorate several trifles, jellies or iced cakes.
Coloured sugars were part of a nineteenth-century confectioner's basic palette, used for finishing trifles, jellies, blancmanges and iced cakes at a time when the visual drama of a dessert was much of its point. The colour itself came from cochineal, the dried bodies of a scale insect farmed in Central and South America and imported into Europe from the sixteenth century onward; before coal-tar dyes became widespread it was the standard red for both food and textiles, and cookery books of this period call for it frequently. Carmine derived from cochineal is still in use today, which is why some sweets and drinks carry a note that they are not suitable for vegetarians.