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Fruit Lozenges
Cherries, currants, or other tart fruits may be made into the old-fashioned lozenges by adding one-third pint (or less) of sugar to each pint of thick, strained fruit juice, simmering together forty minutes and adding when at boiling point two tablespoons gelatine dissolved in a very little cold water. Stir well, remove, and continue stirring till it begins to cool and thicken when pour into buttered earthen pans. Let dry slowly, sprinkle with sugar during the process, and cut into shapes liked.
COOKED SOFT CREAM CANDY FOR STUFFING FRUITS Where confectioner's sugar is not used with white of egg (uncooked), making stiff enough to roll, the following will be found satisfactory: Take two pounds of white sugar and one teacup of water or milk, boiling till just before it threads from spoon if water is used, if milk, till it thickens and can be softly rolled when dropped in water ("the soft ball stage"). Flavour with vanilla or fruit juice. Remove and stir till creamy.
Two related confections: a gelatine-set fruit jelly cut into lozenges, and a cooked fondant for stuffing dates, prunes and walnut halves. Both are governed by sugar concentration, so a thermometer settles most of the vagueness in the original.
- The measuresA pint is 2 cups of strained juice; one-third pint of sugar is a scant 2/3 cup. That is a very low sugar ratio for a fruit jelly, which is why gelatine is doing the setting rather than sugar and pectin.
- Gelatine then and nowTwo tablespoons of the shredded or sheet gelatine of the period was probably not the same strength as two tablespoons of modern powdered gelatine, which works out at roughly 3 envelopes (about 21 g). Start with 2 envelopes for 2 cups of juice and test a spoonful on a cold saucer before committing the batch.
- Add the gelatine off the heatThe recipe says to add it "when at boiling point," but sustained boiling weakens gelatine and the lozenges may set poorly. Bloom it in cold water, pull the pan from the burner, then stir it in until fully dissolved.
- The forty minutesThat simmer is reduction, not cooking. Expect the juice to reduce and thicken noticeably; judge by volume rather than the clock, since a wide pan reduces far faster than a narrow one.
- Buttered earthen pansAny shallow ceramic or glass dish, lightly oiled, poured to about half an inch. A parchment sling makes lifting the slab out for cutting much easier.
- Drying"Slowly" here likely means a long spell in a warm dry place rather than any oven. In a humid kitchen a gelatine jelly at this sugar level can mould before it dries. Keep it uncovered in a dry, airy spot, sugar the cut faces as they set, and refrigerate the finished sweets.
- Sugar stages for the cream candyA teacup is usually read as about 3/4 cup of liquid to 2 lb sugar. "Just before it threads" falls somewhere around 225-230F; the soft ball stage called for with milk is 235-240F. Use a candy thermometer and stop the cooking there.
- Stirring till creamyThis is fondant. Let the syrup cool undisturbed to about 110F before you begin beating, or it will grain coarse and grittyaeration too early gives large crystals. Rest the finished fondant an hour before rolling and stuffing fruit.
- YieldThe cream candy makes roughly 2 lb of fondant, enough to stuff several dozen dates. The jelly slab will depend on how far the juice reduces.
A lozenge originally meant a shape rather than a sweet, the diamond of heraldry, and the word attached itself to confectionery through the apothecary's trade, where medicated pastes were rolled thin and cut into diamonds for dosing. By the late nineteenth century the fruit lozenge had drifted from the pharmacy to the candy dish, sitting alongside the French pâte de fruits and the English fruit pastille as ways of keeping a summer glut of currants or cherries in a form that would last the winter. The gelatine may hint at the age of this particular version: commercially prepared, reliably granulated gelatine became a cheap pantry staple only in the last decades of the 1800s, though how widely period cooks reached for it in place of long boiling and the fruit's own pectin is harder to say. The stuffed-fruit fondant that follows seems to belong to the same moment, when home confectionery was a respectable parlour accomplishment and dates or prunes filled with cream candy and a walnut were made for the holidays.