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Tutti-Frutti Candy
1 cup figs 1 cup seeded raisins 1 cup dates 1 tablespoon candied citron 1 cup hickory nut meats 2 tablespoons fruit juice 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves 1/4 teaspoon salt.
Wash figs, raisins and dates. Remove stones from dates, place fruits together with citron in wire sieve over kettle of hot water. Keep covered and steam for 10 minutes. Remove and allow to cool. Add nut meats and put all ingredients through a meat chopper. Add fruit juice, salt and cloves, mix thoroughly. Roll into small balls 1 in. in diameter.
An uncooked confection: steam, grind, roll. The only real technique is the steaming, which softens the dried fruit enough that it grinds into a paste rather than shredding.
- The steaming stepTen minutes over simmering water is what makes the mixture cohere; skip it and the figs and raisins tear rather than blend. A metal sieve or steamer basket set over a pan of water, covered, does the job. Let the fruit cool before grinding or the paste will be sticky and hard to handle.
- Meat chopperA hand-cranked meat grinder with the coarse plate. A food processor works, pulsed rather than run continuously, so the nuts stay in visible pieces instead of turning to butter.
- Hickory nutsRarely sold shelled and expensive when they are. Pecans are the closest substitute in flavor and fat content; black walnuts give a sharper, more assertive result closer to the original.
- Candied citronThe candied peel of a thick-rinded citrus, still sold in tubs around the holidays alongside glacé cherries. Candied orange or lemon peel substitutes without much loss. One tablespoon means chopped, not a whole slab.
- Fruit juiceUnspecified, and it matters only as a binder. Orange juice is a reasonable reading; one of the two tablespoons can be replaced with brandy or sherry for flavor. Add it a little at a time, since fruit varies in moisture.
- Rolling and finishingDamp hands stop the paste sticking. The recipe stops at the rolled ball; if you want, the balls can be rolled in granulated or confectioners' sugar, or in finely chopped nuts, to keep them from sticking to one another.
- Yield and keepingFour cups of fruit and nuts makes a lot of candy; expect upwards of four dozen one-inch balls, depending on how tightly they are rolled. Layered between waxed paper in a tin in a cool place, they should keep for some weeks.
Tutti frutti is Italian for "all fruits," and by the late nineteenth century the phrase had been thoroughly absorbed into American confectionery English, attached to ice creams, chewing gums and mixed-fruit sweets of every kind. This particular type — dried fruit and nuts ground together, bound with a spoonful of liquid and rolled into balls — belongs to the family of uncooked candies common in home candy chapters of the early twentieth century, requiring no thermometer, no sugar boiling and no special skill. Hickory nuts are the American detail: in much of the Midwest and Upper South they were gathered rather than bought, the free nut in regions where pecans and English walnuts had to be paid for.