Home › Confections › Rose Cream Mints
Rose Cream Mints
1½ cups sugar 2 tablespoons white corn syrup White 1 egg 4 drops oil wintergreen Pink coloring 1/4 cup water Put sugar, corn syrup and water into a smooth granite saucepan, heat gradually to boiling-point, and boil without stirring until syrup will spin a long thread (238° F.). Pour slowly on to the beaten white of egg, and beat until mixture will hold its shape. Add flavoring and coloring. Force on to an oiled paper, using a pastry bag and rose tube. The work must be done quickly.
A soft-cream mint built on an Italian meringue: hot syrup beaten into egg white, flavored, and piped before it sets. Everything hinges on speed once the flavoring goes in.
- The name is about the tube, not the flowerThe name most likely refers to the tube, not the flower -- "rose" was the name of the petal/star pastry tip the recipe calls for, and "cream" describes the soft fondant-like texture. There is no rose flavoring in the recipe; the flavor is wintergreen.
- Granite saucepanGranite ware is speckled enameled steel, valued then for a smooth non-reactive surface. Any heavy stainless saucepan works. Wipe sugar crystals from the sides with a wet brush before the syrup boils, since the recipe forbids stirring.
- 238°F, and trust the thermometer238°F, and trust the thermometer -- "spin a long thread" sits at the thread/soft-ball borderline, and the book itself gives the number. Use a digital or candy thermometer: overcooking the syrup gives stiff, crumbly mints, undercooking gives a mixture too slack to hold a piped shape.
- Oil of wintergreenThis is a concentrated flavoring oil, not an extract, and the recipe's 4 drops is for the whole batch. If you have only wintergreen or peppermint extract you will need considerably more, added cautiously, and the extra liquid will loosen the mixture. Buy food-grade oil; the wintergreen oil sold for topical or aromatherapy use is not intended for eating.
- The egg whiteThe syrup cooks the white only partially and the mints are never heated again. Use pasteurized egg whites, which whip perfectly well for this, if you are serving anyone who should avoid raw egg.
- "The work must be done quickly"The mixture stiffens as it cools and becomes unpipeable within a few minutes. Have the bag fitted, the paper laid out, and the coloring measured before the syrup reaches temperature. If it seizes, set the bowl over barely warm water and beat briefly to loosen.
- Oiled paperParchment or a silicone mat replaces oiled paper and releases better. Let the piped mints dry uncovered at room temperature for several hours until the surface is firm to the touch, then store between layers of waxed paper in a tin.
- Coloring and yieldColoring -- Add liquid or gel color a drop at a time after the flavoring, working fast. The recipe states no yield; expect a few dozen small piped mints from the batch.
Cream mints of this kind belonged to the late-nineteenth-century American candy table: small pastel drops served after dinner, and made at home with little more than a saucepan, a thermometer, and a pastry bag. Fannie Farmer's confections chapter reflects the Boston Cooking School's confidence that candy-making was a teachable, measurable skill rather than a professional mystery, which is why the temperature appears in parentheses beside the older "spins a long thread" test; the domestic-science movement was actively replacing sensory descriptions with numbers. Wintergreen flavoring, obtained from Gaultheria procumbens but also from sweet birch and from synthetic methyl salicylate, was long used in American confectionery and soda fountains, and the pink coloring is pure table decoration, matching the pastel palette expected of party sweets in that period.