Nuts Glacé
Follow the recipe for fruits glacé. Put each nut on a long pin: dip it carefully and lay on oiled paper.
A one-line instruction that assumes you already have a pan of clear sugar syrup at the hard-crack stage from the preceding "fruits glacé" recipe. Everything that can go wrong here happens in the syrup, not in the dipping.
- The syrup you needThe recipe gives no temperatures; a glacé coating is generally plain sugar syrup boiled to the hard-crack stage, around 300-310F, often with a little cream of tartar, corn syrup or a few drops of lemon juice to discourage crystallizing. Boiled much below that it stays tacky and weeps; taken much beyond it the sugar begins to colour.
- The hinge: no stirring, no scrapingOnce the sugar has dissolved, leave it alone and wash any crystals off the pan sides with a wet brush. One stray crystal or one stir with a sugary spoon will seed the whole batch and it will go cloudy and grainy in seconds.
- Keep the syrup workableThe syrup thickens fast as it cools. Hold it over the lowest possible heat while you dip. Reheating repeatedly darkens it, so work in small batches.
- "A long pin"The recipe specifies nothing beyond a long pin; a wooden skewer, a cocktail pick or a dipping fork all work. Nuts with a natural seam, like walnut halves and pecans, take a pin more readily than round almonds or hazelnuts, which are easier managed with a fork and a quick slide onto the paper.
- Dry, warm nutsAny moisture on the nut will make the coating fog or slip off. Toast the nuts lightly and let them cool to just warm before dipping; warm nuts keep the syrup fluid long enough to drain to a thin, glassy shell.
- Oiled paperPaper brushed with a neutral oil. Parchment or a lightly oiled silicone mat does the same job. A marble slab is better still if you have one, since it sets the sugar quickly.
- Humidity decides your dayHard-crack sugar pulls water out of the air. On a damp day glacé nuts turn sticky within an hour or two, however well they were made. Make them in dry weather, store airtight with a desiccant if you have one, and serve the same day.
- Yield and handlingHandling -- Sugar at hard-crack temperature causes deep burns and clings to skin; keep a bowl of ice water within reach and dip nothing with bare fingers.
Glacé is simply the French for glazed or iced, and "fruits glacé" and "nuts glacé" meant the same technique: whole fruits or nutmeats dipped in clear hard-crack sugar to give a brittle transparent shell. The style belongs to the same confectionery tradition as spun sugar, pulled sugar baskets and the caramelized fruits still sold in France, and it depended on a reliable candy thermometer or a steady hand with the cold-water test. Its appearance here as a short variation reflects a common habit of household cook books of the period: one method was written out in full and the neighbouring entries simply pointed back at it.