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Tutti-Frutti Candy
Take the preceding receipt and add to it a teaspoonful of vanilla, two figs cut small and an equal amount of raisins seeded and cut; work up into a bar with all the fine, powdered sugar necessary to make it firm, cut in slices and wrap in wax tissue paper.
A no-cook confection built on a base from the page before it, which means the first job is deciding what that base was. Everything else is straightforward hand work.
- The missing base"The preceding receipt" is not reproduced here, so the base has to be inferred; in a candy section of this kind it is most likely some form of worked sugar cream or fondant. Any stiff fondant or French-style uncooked fondant will carry the fruit and flavoring here; a cooked fondant works too but must be cooled and kneaded before the fruit goes in.
- If the base is uncooked egg whiteNineteenth-century cream candies frequently used raw white as the binder. If you build the base that way, treat it as a raw-egg preparation: pasteurized whites, or switch to a water- or cream-bound fondant.
- "An equal amount" of raisinsAmbiguous in the original — it reads most naturally as an amount equal to the two figs. Judge by eye against the volume of your base; the fruit should be visible in the slice but not so heavy that the bar crumbles.
- Powdered sugarModern confectioners' sugar contains 3–5 percent cornstarch, which is if anything helpful here since it absorbs moisture from the fruit. Add it a spoonful at a time; the phrase "all the fine, powdered sugar necessary" is the whole method — you stop when the mass holds a shape without sticking to the board.
- Dry the fruit firstFigs and raisins carry enough moisture to soften a bar overnight. Blot the cut fruit, then toss it in a little of the powdered sugar before working it in. This is the hinge: wet fruit means a bar that slumps and weeps rather than slicing clean.
- Forming and cuttingRoll or press into a log or a squared bar, chill 30 minutes to firm it, then slice with a thin knife wiped between cuts. Cutting warm gives ragged edges and drags the fruit.
- Wax tissue paperA common candy wrapping of the period. Cut squares of parchment or modern waxed paper and twist the ends, or wrap and store in a tin between layers of paper. Keep at cool room temperature, not the refrigerator, where the sugar will sweat.
- YieldNone given, and since the quantity of the base receipt is unknown the yield cannot be worked out from the text. Well wrapped and kept cool, bars of this kind keep for some weeks.
"Tutti frutti" — Italian for "all fruits" — arrived in American confectionery and soda-fountain vocabulary in the second half of the nineteenth century as a catch-all name for anything studded with mixed candied or dried fruit: ice cream, tutti-frutti creams, and bar candies like this one. Its appearance here is characteristic of the confectionery writing of the period, which teaches by variation: a cook learns one workable fondant and then spins a dozen lines off it by adding vanilla, nuts, coconut, or chopped fruit, each cut into slices and wrapped. Figs and seeded raisins were the cheap, keepable fruits every kitchen had on hand — the instruction to seed the raisins is a reminder that seedless varieties were not yet the default — and the candies are finished in wax tissue wrappers.