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Citron Preserve
Cut the citron in thin slices and soak in a weak brine over night, then place on the stove in fresh water and let come to a boil. Pour off this water and replace with fresh, repeating if necessary (though it may not be). Have ready a syrup (as for ices in Introductory Recipes) and place in this (at boiling point) the sliced fruit, cooking about three-quarters of an hour. Adding more sugar for a heavier syrup or cooking longer must depend upon one's individual taste. Lemon or orange marmalade or other citrus fruit or juice may be added if to be put up for future use. The citron may be preserved in larger pieces by lengthening this process.
This is candied citron in the making — the same confection sold in tubs at Christmas, only wet-packed in syrup rather than dried. The whole method turns on drawing the bitterness out of the rind before any sugar goes near it.
- Which citronThis means the true citrus fruit, Citrus medica — a lumpy, thick-skinned relative of the lemon that is nearly all rind and pith with little juice. The recipe's own phrase "other citrus fruit" supports that reading rather than the watermelon citron (citron melon) called for in many American preserving books of the same era; nor is it the boxed diced peel sold today, which is the finished product.
- The hinge: leaching the bitternessThe overnight brine and the successive boilings exist to pull bitterness out of the pith. Taste a slice after the first boil; if it is still sharply bitter, change the water and boil again. Sugar locks in whatever bitterness remains, so do not move on early.
- "A weak brine"The recipe gives no strength. Something on the order of 2 to 3 tablespoons of salt per quart of water — plainly salty, well short of a curing brine — is one reasonable reading. Drain and rinse the slices before the first fresh-water boil.
- The syrupThe recipe points to a syrup given elsewhere in the book ("as for ices in Introductory Recipes"), which is not reproduced here; period ices syrups are generally plain boiled and skimmed sugar syrups. Use enough to cover the fruit, and have it at a full boil when the drained slices go in, as the recipe directs, so the surfaces set rather than collapse.
- Slice thickness and timingThe recipe says only "thin slices". Three-quarters of an hour at a bare simmer should bring thin slices to translucency — that visual change, not the clock, is the signal. For larger pieces the recipe asks only that the process be lengthened.
- Adding citrusMarmalade or lemon and orange juice supplies both flavour and acid. The recipe offers it only as an option when the preserve is "to be put up for future use" and says nothing about when to add it.
- Keeping itThe recipe says "put up for future use" and then tells you nothing about how. Sealed in sterilised jars and processed in a boiling-water bath according to current tested guidance, this keeps on the shelf; otherwise treat it as a refrigerator preserve and use it within a few weeks.
- Yield and useUse -- Drained and dried on racks, the slices become the candied peel for fruitcake, panettone and mincemeat; left in syrup, they are served in small quantities with cheese or spooned over ice.
Citron was the first citrus fruit to reach the Mediterranean, and for centuries it was grown less for eating than for its rind — too acid and dry to be used like a lemon, but perfect for candying, a trade long associated with Corsica, Sicily and Leghorn (Livorno). The fruit also carries ritual weight as the etrog of the Jewish festival of Sukkot, and preserving the etrog after the holiday is an old domestic custom. Its appearance in a fruit-cookery book reflects a period when candied peel was still made at home rather than bought by the box, and when a cook who wanted fruitcake in December started with a whole citron in autumn. The instruction that the strength of the syrup "must depend upon one's individual taste" is characteristic of the genre: measured recipes were still competing with the older assumption that a competent housekeeper judged by eye.