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Parisian Sweets
1 lb. figs 1 lb. English walnut meat 1 lb. dates Confectioners' sugar Pick over and remove stems from figs and stones from dates. Mix fruit with walnut meat, and force through a meat-chopper. Work, using the hands, on a board dredged with confectioners' sugar, until well blended. Roll to one-fourth inch thickness, using confectioners' sugar for dredging board and pin. Shape with a small round cutter, first dipped in sugar, or cut with a sharp knife in three-fourth inch squares. Roll each piece in confectioners' sugar, and shake to remove superfluous sugar. Pack in layers in a tin box, putting paper between each layer. These confections may be used at dinner in place of bonbons or ginger chips. A combination of nut meat (walnut, almond, and filbert) may be used in equal proportions.
A no-cook fruit-and-nut paste of the kind that filled bonbon dishes before commercial candy was cheap. The whole thing hinges on grinding the fruit fine enough that the mass holds together without any added syrup.
- Equal weights, three pounds totalOne pound each of figs, dates and walnuts yields roughly three pounds of paste. Halve or quarter it comfortably.
- The meat-chopperA hand-cranked grinder is what the recipe assumes. A food processor works, but pulse rather than run it continuously: the walnut oil breaks out and the paste turns greasy and dark if overworked. Grinding the fruit and nuts together, as written, keeps the nuts from becoming butter.
- English walnutsSimply the common walnut, as distinct from the American black walnut, which is far more resinous and would dominate the fruit. Any supermarket walnut is what is wanted. Filberts are hazelnuts.
- Choose soft dried figsMission or Calimyrna figs that still give under the thumb. Hard, leathery figs will not grind smoothly; soak them 20 minutes in hot water and blot dry before using. Snip the tough stem nubs off with scissors rather than pulling them.
- Confectioners' sugar does the work of flourIt keeps the sticky paste off the board and pin and dries the cut surfaces. Modern powdered sugar contains cornstarch, which helps here. Keep a bowl of it at hand and re-dredge often; the paste grabs the moment it is left bare.
- Rolling and cuttingRoll between two sheets of parchment if the paste fights you, then peel the top sheet away. Dip the cutter or knife in sugar for every cut. A chilled paste, half an hour in the refrigerator, cuts far more cleanly than one straight from the grinder.
- StorageLayered between parchment in a tin, these keep several weeks at cool room temperature and improve in the first few days as the pieces firm. Refrigeration makes them weep; if the sugar coating dissolves, roll them again.
- Ginger chipsThe comparison is presumably to preserved or crystallized ginger sliced thin. The recipe puts these in the same role as bonbons at dinner: a small dish alongside coffee, not a dessert course in themselves.
Uncooked fruit pastes like this one belong to the sugarplum tradition that long predates boiled candy: dried figs, dates and nuts pounded together were sweetmeats in medieval Europe and the Middle East, and the technique survives today in everything from Middle Eastern date confections to the commercial fruit-and-nut bar. The "Parisian" in the name appears to be aspirational rather than geographic, of a piece with the French labelling American cookbooks favoured around 1900 to signal refinement. What makes the recipe distinctly turn-of-the-century American is the abundance it assumes -- pound lots of imported figs and dates, walnut meats already shelled -- and the reliance on the household meat-chopper, a clamp-on iron grinder that had become common equipment and was pressed into service for nuts, breadcrumbs and cooked leftovers as readily as for meat.