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Grapes Glazed With Sugar
Divide some bunches of grapes into small clusters. Put into a deep saucepan 1 pound of sugar. 1 large cup of water. 1/2 teaspoonful cream tartar. Stir to dissolve the sugar, then set it on to boil as if for candy. When the syrup has boiled 10 minutes try a drop in cold water. When it sets so that it is hard to press between finger and thumb and the edges of drops are hard and brittle it is ready.
Take it from the fire, dip the clusters of grapes in (without ever stirring the candy) and lay them on dishes slightly greased to dry. Should the candy become set in the kettle it may have a spoonful or two of water added and be made hot again.
A hard-crack sugar dip, essentially the same technique as a candy apple, scaled down to small clusters of grapes. The whole thing turns on the syrup stage and on the grapes being bone dry.
- The syrup stage"Hard to press between finger and thumb... hard and brittle" is the hard-crack stage, 300-310F on a candy thermometer. Ten minutes is a rough guide only; go by the thermometer or the cold-water test, since pan width and heat level change the timing enormously.
- MeasurementsA pound of sugar is roughly 2 1/4 cups, and "a large cup" of water is not a fixed measure, so the proportion here is approximate rather than a set ratio. The cream of tartar inverts some of the sucrose and is what keeps the syrup from crystallising into a grainy mass.
- Do not stirThe instruction to dip without ever stirring is the hinge. Agitating a supersaturated syrup seeds crystallisation and the whole panful goes cloudy and sandy. Tilt the pan to pool the syrup rather than moving it with a spoon.
- Dry grapes, or nothing worksWater on the fruit makes the coating steam, sputter and slide off. Wash the clusters well ahead, pat them dry and let them air-dry an hour. Room-temperature fruit sets a thinner, clearer shell than fridge-cold fruit, which sweats.
- HumidityHard-crack sugar draws moisture from the air and turns tacky. On a damp day the glaze will never fully harden. Cool, dry conditions give a shell that stays crisp for a few hours.
- The drying surfaceLightly greased dishes work; a silicone mat or parchment works better and releases cleanly without adding a film of fat to the finish.
- Reheating the panAdding a spoonful or two of water and reheating is sound, but bring it back to the same 300-310F before dipping again, otherwise the coating stays soft and sticky.
- Yield and timingA pound of sugar coats a generous amount of fruit, though the recipe gives no yield. Best made the day they are served, since juice eventually weeps through and dissolves the shell from the inside.
- HandlingSugar at 300F causes deep burns and clings to skin. Use tongs or a fork on the stems, keep a bowl of cold water at hand, and do not test the syrup with a finger straight from the pan.
Glazed or "frosted" fruit belongs to the late nineteenth-century dessert table, where confectioners dipped grapes, cherries, orange sections and candied peel in clear boiled sugar to build the glittering centrepieces that closed a formal dinner. The American Pastry Cook was written for working bakers and hotel pastry departments rather than home cooks, which is why the method is given as a bare sequence of stages with no thermometer reading: cold-water testing remained in common professional use alongside the sugar thermometers already found in confectionery work, and a pastry cook was expected to read a drop of syrup by feel. Cream of tartar, a byproduct of winemaking, was by then widely used as an interfering agent in boiled sugar work, and the trick of reviving a set panful with a spoonful of water is the kind of shop-floor economy that distinguishes a trade manual from a household book.