Pralines, Lemon
INGREDIENTS. -Lemons and sugar.
Pare some lemons, and cut the rinds into pieces an inch long and very narrow.
Boil some sugar nearly to a caramel, put in the lemon shreds, stirring them about well with a large wooden spoon till cold; then set them on a sieve to shake off the loose sugar, and store in tin boxes.
Pralines, Pistachio. INGREDIENTS.-Equal quantities of loaf sugar and pistachio nuts, rose-water for flavouring.
Dissolve the sugar in water till it can be made into a ball, add to it the nuts, blanched and chopped; take the pan from the fire, stirring them till they have taken all the sugar, then put the pan on again, and boil to a caramel. Put the pralines next on a sieve, and scatter over sufficient rose-water to flavour them.
PRAWNS, TO DRESS.
Two sugar-boiling recipes run together here, both of them exercises in controlling crystallisation. The instructions assume you can read a syrup by eye; a thermometer removes the guesswork.
- The hinge: sanding, then caramelIn the pistachio version, stirring off the heat is what makes the sugar go cloudy and grainy so it coats each nut. Only after that coating has set do you return the pan to the heat and let it darken. Skip the off-heat stirring and you get nuts stuck in a slab of clear caramel.
- Sugar stages in numbers"Till it can be made into a ball" corresponds to what is now called soft ball, around 235-240F. "Nearly to a caramel" is vaguer; something short of colouring, in the hard-crack region (roughly 300-310F), would give a syrup that sets brittle around the peel. Caramelisation proper begins somewhere around 320-340F and turns bitter fast beyond about 360F. The book gives no temperatures; these are modern equivalents, not its own instruction.
- Loaf sugarRefined cane sugar sold in hard cones, broken up and crushed before use. Ordinary granulated sugar is the direct replacement. Refined sugar of this kind was the usual choice for boiled sugar work, being purer than cheaper sugars and throwing less scum.
- Equal quantitiesRead this as equal weights, not volumes: roughly 8 oz sugar to 8 oz shelled pistachios. There is no water quantity given for the syrup; a few tablespoons, just enough to wet the sugar, is the working amount.
- Blanching pistachiosThirty seconds in boiling water loosens the papery skins, which then rub off between a towel. This is done for colour, and it matters: skins on gives a muddy brown sweet rather than a green one.
- The lemon rindsPare with a peeler so you take only the coloured zest and none of the white pith, which turns bitter under sugar. Cut into fine matchsticks about an inch long, and have them dry before they meet the syrup or the sugar will seize and spit.
- Stirring till coldThe lemon shreds are stirred continuously as the sugar cools so they stay separate and take on a frosted coat. A wooden spoon and a wide pan help; a large sheet of parchment to tip them onto makes the sieving step easier.
- Rose-waterAdded off the heat, once the pralines are on the sieve, since its aroma is volatile and would be lost in a hot pan. Modern rose-waters vary enormously in strength - start with half a teaspoon and taste.
- Storage and yieldStorage -- Tin boxes were for keeping damp out, and that is still the point: any sugar-coated nut or peel goes tacky in humid air, so use an airtight container with the pieces fully cold and separated. Neither recipe states a quantity, so no yield can be given.
The praline began as a sugared almond and only later became the wider family of caramelised nuts and peels; the name is generally traced to the household of the 17th-century French marshal du Plessis-Praslin, whose cook is traditionally credited with the confection, though the story is repeated more often than it is documented. By Mrs Beeton's day "praline" in an English kitchen meant almost any nut or shred of citrus set in boiled sugar, and it belonged to the confectionery chapter of a book that expected the household to make its own dessert sweets rather than buy them. Candied peel of this kind also served a thrifty purpose: sugar boiled hard enough turned the rinds into something that would keep for weeks in a tin.