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Chocolate Dipped Candied Orange Peel
Remove peel from four thin-skinned oranges in quarters. Cover with cold water, bring to the boiling point and let simmer until soft. Drain and cut in thin strips lengthwise, using scissors. Boil one cup sugar and one-half cup water. until syrup will spin a thread when dropped from tip of spoon. Add one-half the prepared strips, and press under syrup, using the back of spoon. Cook slowly six minutes, and remove to platter, using a fork, taking up as little syrup as possible. Cook remaining half in same manner. Let stand to dry off, then dip, one piece at a time, in melted "Dot" Chocolate, using the fingers. Remove to paraffine paper, and let stand until cool.
A straightforward two-stage confection: candy the peel in syrup, dry it, then dip. The only real technical hinge is the sugar stage, which the original describes by feel rather than by number.
- "Spin a thread" means 230-235FThat is the thread stage on a candy thermometer, the very start of the syrup ladder. Below it the peel stays limp and weeping; much above it the syrup begins to crystallize on the platter.
- "Dot" ChocolateA proprietary Walter Baker product called for by name; the booklet gives no description of it beyond its use for dipping. Substitute a good bittersweet or semisweet couverture, tempered, or use candy coating if you want to skip tempering.
- Paraffine paperWax paper. Parchment or a silicone mat works better and will not stick to the still-soft chocolate.
- Modern oranges have thicker pithThin-skinned fruit assumed -- The recipe specifies thin-skinned oranges and a single blanching. If your peel carries a lot of white pith, blanch in two or three changes of fresh water, bringing each to a boil, or the finished peel will be bitter.
- Cook in two batches as writtenAdding all the peel at once drops the syrup temperature and the strips stew rather than candy. Six minutes per half-batch, slowly, is right.
- Drying is not optionalThe recipe says to let the strips stand to dry off. Spread them on a rack rather than stacked on the platter, and give them time to go tacky rather than wet; chocolate applied over damp syrup will streak and slide off.
- Dip with a fork, not fingersFinger heat mars the temper and leaves prints. A dipping fork or two-tine fork gives a cleaner set.
- Yield and keepingThe yield depends entirely on how thinly the quarters are cut. Store in a single layer in a cool, dry place; refrigeration encourages the chocolate to bloom.
Candied citrus peel is old confectionery thrift, a way of turning the discarded half of an expensive imported fruit into a sweet that keeps. The chocolate dip is the newer part, and the reason this recipe sits in a Walter Baker booklet at all: the Dorchester, Massachusetts firm published collections of contributed recipes as advertising, calling for its own products by name, here the "Dot" chocolate. The recipe is credited to an individual contributor, Miss M. E. Robinson, a convention that gave such pamphlets something of the authority of a community cookbook while keeping the brand on every page.