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Candied Orange Peel
Remove peel from four thin-skinned oranges in quarters. Cover with cold water, bring to boiling-point, and cook slowly until soft. Drain, remove white portion, using a spoon, and cut yellow portion in thin strips, using scissors. Boil one-half cup water and one cup sugar until syrup will thread when dropped from tip of spoon. Cook strips in syrup five minutes, drain, and coat with fine granulated sugar. 2 lbs. sugar
A straightforward two-stage confection: the peel is simmered until tender, then candied in a light syrup. Two details in the original need translating for a modern cook.
- "Will thread" means 230-234FThe thread stage is the lowest sugar stage, around 230-234F on a candy thermometer, when a drop pulled from the spoon forms a fine strand. Half a cup of water with one cup of sugar reaches it in only a few minutes over medium heat, so start checking early.
- The stray "2 lbs. sugar"This line sits outside the method and does not belong to it; it looks like a fragment carried over from an adjacent entry or heading. Ignore it; the recipe itself calls for one cup of sugar for the syrup plus a little more for rolling.
- Wash the fruit firstYou are eating the outer rind, and modern citrus is usually waxed and sprayed. Scrub the oranges under hot water, or buy unwaxed fruit.
- "Cook slowly until soft" is 30-45 minutesThe peel should yield easily to a fingernail with no rubbery resistance. Underboiled peel stays leathery no matter how long it sits in syrup. Some cooks change the water once or twice to reduce bitterness.
- Thin-skinned orangesThe instruction rules out navels and most thick-rinded eating oranges. Valencias give the thin, even peel the recipe assumes; if you only have thick peel, expect more scraping at the pith stage.
- Scraping the pithBoiled pith comes away readily with the bowl of a spoon. Leave a very thin layer if you like a softer strip, but heavy pith holds moisture and turns the finished peel damp and bitter.
- Five minutes is genuinely shortMany later recipes simmer peel in syrup for half an hour or more to candy it through. The Boston Cooking-School version gives a lightly coated, still-chewy strip rather than a translucent glace, and is likely to keep less well than the heavily saturated kind.
- Drying and storageAfter rolling in granulated sugar, spread the strips on a rack for several hours until tacky rather than wet, then store airtight with a little extra sugar.
Candying citrus peel is often said to be among the oldest uses of sugar in European cooking, generally traced to the medieval and Renaissance apothecary's trade, when preserved rinds were sold as much for digestion as for pleasure. By the time Fannie Farmer compiled the Boston Cooking-School Cook Book in 1896, sugar was cheap and abundant in American kitchens and the confections chapter included fondants, fudges, nut brittles and glace fruits that a middle-class household could make at home instead of buying from a confectioner. Peel occupied a particular niche in the thrifty kitchen: the fruit had already been eaten or juiced, and the rind, otherwise waste, became a sweet for the candy dish or a chopped addition to cakes and puddings. The technique in this recipe -- boil to tenderize, then cook briefly in thread-stage syrup -- is essentially unchanged in home candy-making today.