Strawberry Drops
- INGREDIENTS.- pint of juice crushed out of the fruit, 1/2 lb. of castor sugar, 2 whites of eggs.
AVERAGE COST, 6d.
Whisk the eggs to a very stiff froth; then mix all together, and drop on tins. Bake the drops in a very cool oven.
This is a strawberry meringue, dried rather than baked. The success of it rests entirely on how little heat you use and how much liquid goes into the whites.
- The quantity of juice is ambiguousThe ingredient line has lost its fraction, so the volume of strawberry juice cannot be read with confidence. A full pint of juice against 8 oz of sugar and two whites will never set; a quarter-pint (about 5 fl oz) is the most a mixture of this size will carry, and even that is generous.
- Castor sugarCaster or superfine sugar. Granulated will work if you whisk long enough for it to dissolve, but the drops will weep more.
- A very cool oven200-225F (95-110C), or the lowest setting your oven holds. The aim is to dry the drops out over one to two hours, not to colour them. If they take on any tan, the oven is too hot.
- Fold, do not stir"Mix all together" costs you the froth if taken literally. Whisk the whites to stiff peaks, whisk in the sugar a spoonful at a time until glossy, then fold the juice in last with as few strokes as will combine it.
- Drop on tinsLine the tins with baking parchment. Meringue welds itself to metal and a lined sheet saves the batch.
- Getting the juiceCrush ripe strawberries and press through a sieve, then let it stand and pour off the clear liquid. Pulp and seeds weigh the froth down. Reducing the juice by half in a pan and cooling it fully gives more flavour for less water.
- Yield and keepingTeaspoon-sized drops from this quantity give roughly three dozen. Leave them in the switched-off oven to cool, then store airtight; in a humid kitchen they turn sticky within a day.
- The cost note6d is pre-decimal British currency, sixpence, and reflects Victorian prices. It is of historical interest only.
Sugar-and-egg-white "drops" run through English cookery books from the eighteenth century onward, under names like kisses and drops, and they were one way of using up whites left over from a custard or a rich cake. Before ovens could be held at a low steady heat, such things were dried in a bread oven's falling heat, in a cooling stove, or before a fire, which is the kind of heat the instruction for "a very cool oven" implies. Fruit versions suit the short strawberry season. Mrs Beeton's household books are full of such small economies, where the by-product of one dish becomes the basis of another.