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Candies and Candy Making: Almonds
Sugared Almonds. These bonbons are of two sorts: burnt almonds, sometimes called pralines, and sugared almonds, sometimes called dragees. They consist of whole almonds coated with sugar, which is often colored in various delicate tints.
To make burnt almonds, bring to a boil over a moderate fire 1/2 pound of finely granulated sugar in pint of water in a round-bottomed vessel, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon until dissolved. Then throw in 1 pound of fine Jordan almonds shelled and sifted, to remove dust and dirt. Stir in the almonds gently in the sirup until they are heard to crackle slightly. Take them off the fire and stir vigorously so that the sugar grains and becomes almost a powder, and each almond has a complete coat.
Pick out the almonds, shake them gently in a coarse sieve to remove the loose sugar, and cover them with a folded flannel cloth to keep them warm. Replace the sugar, add pound of Confectioners' XXX sugar and pint of water with a teaspoonful of any desired coloring matter.
Boil to the soft ball, remove from the fire and stir in the almonds as before. Again sift out the loose sugar and repeat the process until the candies are of the desired size.
Or blanch any desired quantity of almonds and fry them to a lightbrown color in butter. Roll them in a napkin to remove the excess of butter, and pour over them a sirup of white sugar boiled to a thread, stirring until they are quite cold. This is a celebrated Indian sweetmeat.
To Gloss Burnt Almonds. - Dissolve 2 tablespoonfuls of gum arabic in 4 tablespoonfuls of water in a double boiler. Drop the burnt almonds in this after they have become cold and hardened, stir them gently) and turn them out in a sieve. After the gummed water has dripped away shake the sieve gently over a slow fire until they are dry.
This is old-fashioned hand panning: nuts tumbled in successive coats of crystallizing syrup until they build up a shell. The method still works, but the text as printed has lost several fractions and assumes you can read sugar stages by eye.
- Missing quantitiesThe original reads "in pint of water" and "add pound of Confectioners' XXX sugar and pint of water"; the fractions appear to have dropped out of the type. What they were is guesswork — 1/2 pound of sugar to a full pint of water would be very thin, so a smaller measure of water is likely — so work to a syrup consistency cooked to the stage named rather than trusting the printed numbers.
- Sugar stages in degrees"Soft ball" is 235-240F. "Boiled to a thread" is given variously between about 215 and 235F depending on the source, so treat it as a light syrup rather than a fixed mark. A thermometer removes the guesswork the original cook did with cold water and fingertips.
- Confectioners' XXXAn old fineness grade of powdered sugar; whether such grades carried added starch varied, whereas modern icing sugar generally does. Starch-cut icing sugar is likely to cloud the coat and crystallize less cleanly, so a fine granulated sugar is the safer substitute for panning.
- The hinge: grainingEverything depends on pulling the pan off the heat at the crackle and then stirring hard until the syrup turns from glossy to sandy. Stop stirring too soon and the almonds cement into a single lump. This is the same crystallization you would fight in fudge, deliberately provoked.
- Jordan almondsThe term meant a long, flat Spanish-type almond, not today's pastel-coated wedding favor, which is the finished sweet. Any large, plump whole almond works; the recipe's "shelled and sifted" step is unnecessary with modern packaged nuts.
- Round-bottomed vesselA copper or stainless bowl-shaped pan lets the nuts roll rather than stack in corners. A wok or a deep stainless mixing bowl set over the burner does the same job.
- ColoringA teaspoon of liquid coloring per batch is a great deal by modern standards; gel colors are far stronger, and a few drops will tint a coat. Add it to the syrup, not to the graining sugar.
- Gum arabic glossGum arabic is still sold as a food glaze (E414) through cake-decorating suppliers. Two tablespoons to four of water gives a thick solution; drain well on the sieve or the almonds dry tacky.
- Yield and keepingA pound of almonds carrying two or three coats gives roughly 2 to 2 1/2 lb of finished bonbons. Store airtight and dry — humidity softens the shell within a day or two.
Panned sugar almonds are among the oldest European confections, generally traced to the medieval and Renaissance apothecary's trade, when sugar was medicine and comfit-making was a matter of hours of patient ladling over a slowly turning pan. The two names in this entry mark a real distinction: dragée is the smooth, built-up white or tinted shell, while the praline — often said to be named for the seventeenth-century French Marshal du Plessis-Praslin, whose cook is credited with it — is the rougher caramelized coat. The butter-fried variant the author calls "a celebrated Indian sweetmeat" is printed with no further identification than that. The inclusion of hand panning shows how much finishing work was still expected of a home kitchen before commercial candy became cheap.