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Candied Cherries
There are several methods of candying cherries or any fruit. One method is to use pound for pound of sugar and fruit, placing sugar in a kettle, allowing for each pound a scant half-cup of water and simmering till dissolved. Skim, and when the syrup is boiling add the cherries. Let the fruit cook very slowly until translucent, when pour off the syrup, spread fruit in dishes, and dry in a slow oven or the sun for ten hours or until dry. Sprinkle with sugar and put away in layers.
The second method, which is better for heavier fruits, but may also be applied to cherries, is to make a lighter syrup, using a half-pint of water to each pint of sugar and letting come to a boil, cooking then for two minutes. Pour then over the fruit and let all stand a day and night. Drain add to the syrup half the quantity of sugar used the day previous and boil until this is dissolved. Pour over the fruit and let all stand for forty-eight hours. Repeat the process, letting fruit stand in the syrup four different times, when drain and wash in cold water.
If to be glazed the fruit should be dipped in syrup (as for crystallising), then dried as quickly as possible in the open air or by electrical fans. If to be crystallised dip in a syrup which will string (like candy) from the spoon and dry in oven or sun very slowly.
In some places the fruit for candying is first (after washing, wiping, and cutting as required) soaked in brine, then placed in boiling water, the time depending upon the kind of fruit and its stage of maturity.
Two candying methods in one paragraph: a quick one-day boil and a slow multi-day syrup soak. Neither is difficult, but both depend on moving the sugar concentration up in stages so the fruit stays plump rather than shrivelling.
- The hinge: raise the syrup slowlyFruit dropped straight into heavy syrup loses its water faster than sugar can replace it and collapses. The first method guards against this by cooking very slowly; the second by stepping the sugar up over several days. Rushing either gives you tough, wrinkled cherries.
- Slow ovenPeriod 'slow oven' is usually reckoned at roughly 250-300F; for drying candied fruit keep to the bottom of that range or below, with the door propped slightly ajar so moisture escapes. Ten hours is plausible at that heat; a dehydrator at 135-145F does the same job with less watching.
- A syrup that will stringThis is the thread stage, roughly 223-235F on a candy thermometer. Taken much beyond that the coating sets firmer and can go cloudy rather than remaining a clear glaze.
- Pint and pound measuresA pint of granulated sugar is roughly 14 oz, so "half-pint of water to each pint of sugar" is a lighter syrup than the pound-for-pound version. A scant half-cup of water per pound of sugar in the first method is about 100 ml.
- PittingThe recipe says nothing about stones. Pit the cherries first with a pitter, entering from the stem end so the fruit holds its shape; unpitted cherries candy well enough but are unpleasant to eat and store.
- The brine stepThe closing line points to trade practice, and brining before a long syrup is related to the logic behind the later maraschino process. Brine firms the flesh; the bleaching in commercial maraschino work comes from sulphured brine rather than salt alone. It is optional for home cooking and the recipe gives no concentration or time, so treat it as a note rather than an instruction.
- Sun dryingPractical only in dry heat with good air movement, and the fruit needs covering against insects. In a humid climate the oven or a fan is the safer route; sticky half-dried fruit left out will ferment or mould.
- Storage and yieldStorage -- layer with granulated sugar or waxed paper in an airtight tin; properly dried, it keeps several months in a cool cupboard, and refrigeration makes it weep.
Candying is one of the oldest sugar preservations, worked out in the Arab world and carried into European kitchens as sugar became affordable; by the nineteenth century glacé cherries, angelica and citron peel were standard confectioner's stock and standard cake decoration. What is notable in this entry is its frankness about scale: the alternating soak-and-strengthen method described here, four rests over more than a week, is the professional confectioner's routine, and the closing note about brine and boiling water is straight from the trade rather than the home kitchen. The brining of cherries before candying is generally traced to attempts to hold the fruit firm and pale through a long syrup process, the same logic that later produced the maraschino cherry.