Orange Paste
4 level tablespoons gelatine 1⅓ cups water 2 cups granulated sugar 1 orange 1 lemon Confectioners' sugar Cornstarch Soak the gelatine in half of the water; bring the sugar to a boil in the other half and combine the two. Boil slowly but steadily for twenty minutes; add the grated rind of the orange and the juice of lemon and orange, making a half cup in all. Rinse a tin in cold water; pour in the mixture to the depth of one inch. When the paste is firmly set immerse the mold in warm water; turn out the paste; cut in cubes and roll in a mixture of confectioners' sugar and cornstarch.
The paste may be varied by using different fruit juices, flavoring and coloring.
A gelatin-set fruit paste of the Turkish delight family, made without cooking sugar to a stage — the twenty-minute boil is what concentrates it. A few conversions and one point about the boil are all it needs.
- The gelatine measureFour level tablespoons of granulated gelatine is a large quantity: on the order of five 1/4-oz envelopes, roughly 1 1/4 oz / 35 g. Use the granulated kind and soften it in the cold water until it looks like wet sand before it meets the syrup.
- The twenty-minute boil is the hingeThat slow, steady boil drives off water, and it is what stands between you and a soft, weeping paste. Keep it at a lazy rolling boil in a heavy pan and stir occasionally so the bottom does not catch; expect the syrup to thicken visibly by the end.
- Juice goes in off the heatJuice goes in at the end -- The recipe adds the rind and juice after the twenty-minute boil but does not say to remove the pan from the heat; there is nothing to gain by boiling on afterwards, since prolonged heating flattens citrus aroma and acid held hot can weaken the gelatine.
- "Making a half cup in all"One orange and one lemon rarely give exactly 1/2 cup. Juice them, measure, and top up with more orange juice to reach the half cup — the liquid quantity matters more to the set than the exact ratio of the two fruits.
- The tinTwo-plus cups of mixture poured one inch deep wants something around a 9x5 loaf pan or a 6-inch square tin. Rinsing in cold water and leaving it wet is the only release the paste gets, so do not wipe it dry, and do not grease it.
- Set at room temperatureLeave it several hours or overnight on the counter rather than in the refrigerator. Chilled gelatin pastes sweat when they come back to room temperature and the sugar coating dissolves into a slick.
- Unmolding and coatingA few seconds in warm water is enough — long enough and the outer layer melts. Use about equal parts confectioners' sugar and cornstarch, cut with an oiled knife, and toss the cut faces immediately so they do not weld back together.
- Yield and keepingExpect roughly 36 one-inch cubes. Store them in a single layer in a tin with more of the sugar-and-starch mixture, and re-dust before serving; in humid weather they will go tacky within a day or two.
Gelatine candies of this kind spread through American cookbooks in the decades after commercial powdered gelatine became a cheap pantry staple, which put a dessert once dependent on hours of simmering calves' feet within reach of any cook with a saucepan. The technique and the finished sweet — a boiled sugar syrup set with gelatine, cut in cubes and rolled in a starch-and-sugar dust to keep it from sticking — is the same idea as Turkish delight, generally traced to Ottoman confectionery, though there the setting agent is starch rather than gelatine and the result is chewier. The closing line, offering "different fruit juices, flavoring and coloring," reflects the ready availability of bottled extracts and colourings by this period.