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Parisian Sweets
Another sweet which is very good.
Use equal quantities of figs, dates, and nuts. The nuts may be omitted and prunes or raisins added. Put through a food chopper. Mix well and roll in a little powdered sugar or grated cocoanut.
A no-cook fruit paste of the kind that filled the confection chapters of early twentieth-century household books. The whole thing hinges on the fruit being sticky enough to bind itself once ground.
- QuantitiesThe original gives none beyond "equal quantities." Half a cup each of figs, dates and nuts makes roughly 20 small balls; scale from there. Weigh rather than measure by volume, since dried fruit packs unevenly.
- Food chopperThis is the hand-cranked meat grinder clamped to the table, not a food processor. A processor works but chops rather than extrudes: pulse in short bursts or the mixture turns to a single gummy lump around the blade.
- Fruit conditionModern dried figs and dates may be drier than the loose, barrel-sold fruit of the period. If the mixture will not hold together, steam the fruit briefly or add a teaspoon of water or orange juice, not more, or the sweets will stay tacky.
- Stems and pitsPull the hard stem tips off the figs and check dates for pits even when sold as pitted. Both survive a grinder intact and will find a tooth.
- NutsThe recipe specifies none; walnuts or almonds suit it. Toasting them first gives noticeably more flavour in a sweet that has no cooking step to develop any.
- CocoanutThe period product was generally unsweetened desiccated coconut, finer and drier than the sweetened flake sold today. Unsweetened fine shred is the closer match and keeps the sweets from cloying.
- Shaping and keepingRoll into balls or press into a shallow pan and cut into squares. They keep two to three weeks in a tin between layers of waxed paper; refrigeration firms them but dulls the fruit flavour, so bring them back to room temperature before serving.
Ground dried-fruit confections were a staple of the American candy chapter after the hand-cranked food chopper became a common kitchen fixture in the late nineteenth century. The name is aspirational rather than geographic: "Parisian" was applied freely to anything meant to sound refined, and there is nothing particularly French about figs, dates and walnuts. What the recipe does record is real, though: cheap imported dried fruit from the Mediterranean and California had become widely available, and a sweet requiring no sugar boiling, no thermometer and no fire suited a book aimed at inexperienced cooks.