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Candies and Candy Making: Lozenges
LOZENGES - Peppermint Lozenges. Place 1 ounce of picked gum tragacanth in an earthenware vessel covered with 5 ounces of warm water and let stand over night. Squeeze it through a cheese cloth, pour it out on a marble or other hard, smooth surface, and knead it with the palms of the hands until it becomes white and springy.
Knead in gradually enough Confectioners' XXX sugar to make a stiff paste. About 1½ pounds will be required. Hollow the top of the mass, sprinkle over it½ teaspoonful of essence of peppermint and 2 or 3 drops of strong cobalt blue to make a brilliant white. Knead this in thoroughly, flatten out the mass, sprinkle top and bottom with Confectioners' XXX sugar, and roll out to 1/80 inch or less in thickness. Stamp out the lozenges with a suitable cutter, and place them on sheets of paper dusted with confectioners' sugar to dry and harden.
Or stir together pound of pure starch, 3½ pounds of Confectioners' XXX sugar, and flavor with oil of peppermint. Mix to a stiff paste with dissolved gum arabic. Roll out and cut to any desired shape.
Licorice Lozenges. Stir up 2 pounds of Confectioners' XXX sugar with 1 pound of pure concentrated extract of licorice, knead to a stiff paste with the aid of a little dissolved gum arabic, and mold or stamp to any desired shape.
Or mix 10 ounces of Confectioners' XXX sugar, 3 ounces of powdered gum tragacanth, with 10 ounces of pure concentrated essence of licorice.
A confectioner's formula from the era when candy colouring came off the pigment shelf rather than the grocer's. Two things in it put the page out of reach: the whitening agent and the sheer dose of licorice extract.
- The cobalt blue"Strong cobalt blue" here is a pigment solution, used in trace amounts to cancel the yellow cast of gum paste the same way laundry bluing whitens linen. Cobalt salts are cumulative toxins affecting the heart and thyroid, and no cobalt compound is permitted as a food colour. There is no safe household quantity of it in candy.
- Concentrated licorice extractOne pound of concentrated extract to two pounds of sugar is a confectioner's proportion built for a product eaten a lozenge at a time, but glycyrrhizin in quantity raises blood pressure and depletes potassium. The second licorice formula, at ten ounces of essence to ten ounces of sugar, is stronger still.
- Gum tragacanthStill sold, usually as a powder for sugarcraft rather than the "picked" (hand-sorted) whole gum called for here. It is a permitted food additive and is not the problem with this page; it is simply the binder that lets a sugar paste be rolled and stamped.
- Confectioners' XXX sugarA grading of powdered sugar by fineness, coarser than the 10X sold today.
- Dissolved gum arabicGum arabic (acacia gum) dissolved in warm water to a syrup, used as an edible glue. It is a standard food ingredient and remains widely available, though the recipe never states a concentration.
- Stated thicknessThe rolling thickness given is far thinner than any lozenge could be stamped or handled. Treat the figure as unreliable rather than as a target.
- If you want lozengesUse a current confectionery recipe. Gum paste, peppermint oil and a lozenge cutter are all still obtainable; the colouring and the licorice loading in this text are not worth reproducing.
Lozenges began as apothecary work rather than candy: a medicated powder bound with gum and sugar, cut into the diamond shape (French losange) that gave the form its name. Peppermint and licorice were the two great pharmacy flavours, one carminative and one a cough and throat remedy, and both crossed into the sweetshop during the nineteenth century as sugar grew cheap. Household Discoveries is a compendium of trade formulas repackaged for domestic use, which is why this entry reads like a confectioner's bench note, complete with a pigment for whitening and no yield stated. The instruction to knead the soaked gum until it turns "white and springy" is the genuinely skilled part.