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Fruit Candy
3 C sugar. 1/4 lb. butter. 1/2 pt. cream. 1 lb. raisins 1 lb. figs 1 lb. dates Mrs. P. G. Osborn. 1/2 lb. English walnut meats Boil sugar, butter and cream to the soft ball stage. Cut dates and figs in small pieces, add raisins and nuts. Stir all together. Line candy box with wax paper, turn in the candy and cut out in pieces as used. Will keep indefinitely.
Mrs. B. H. Whitman.
Two contributions have collided on the page: the fruit-and-nut list belongs to one recipe, the boiled-sugar method to another, and the syrup ingredients were never given quantities. Read it as a template rather than a formula.
- The missing measurementsThe instruction calls for sugar, butter and cream but the amounts appear nowhere in the text, and no honest conversion can be supplied. Community cookbooks of this era were typeset from handwritten cards, and dropped lines like this are common.
- Soft ball stageThat is 234-240F on a candy thermometer, the point at which a drop of syrup in cold water forms a ball that flattens between the fingers. Cooked past it the mixture sets hard and the fruit will not stir in.
- Dried fruit then and nowFigs and dates a century ago were generally drier and firmer than many of today's soft, high-moisture packs. Modern fruit chops more easily but is likely to add moisture to the mixture, which can soften the set.
- RaisinsThese may well have been seeded muscats, larger and more perfumed than the seedless raisins now standard, though the recipe does not say. Any dark raisin works; the pieces should be roughly the size of the chopped fig and date so the candy cuts cleanly.
- English walnutsSimply the common walnut, distinguished in American books from the native black walnut, which is stronger and more resinous. Toast them briefly before chopping.
- Working speedOnce the syrup reaches temperature the fruit and nuts must go in at once and the whole thing be pressed into the pan before it sets. Have everything chopped and the lined pan ready first.
- The panA "candy box" here means a shallow tin or box lined with wax paper, as the recipe directs. Three pounds of fruit plus a half pound of nuts and the boiled syrup makes a substantial quantity, so use the largest shallow container you have.
- Keeping"Will keep indefinitely" is optimistic but not far wrong. Sugar and dried fruit are both poor hosts for spoilage; wrapped in waxed paper in a tin, it holds for a month or more, drying slowly rather than going off.
Church and charity cookbooks like this one were assembled from cards submitted by members, printed cheaply and sold to raise money, and their fingerprints are all over this page: two women's names, two half-recipes, and no editor to catch the seam. Fruit candy of this kind belongs to the American confectionery boom of the late nineteenth century, when cheap refined sugar and a reliable supply of California and Mediterranean dried fruit by rail and steamer put boiled sweets within reach of an ordinary kitchen. Boiled sugar was boiled sugar, and the same skill that produced a fondant icing produced the Christmas candy box.