Glace Fruits
2 cups sugar
2 tablespoons lemon-juice or
Fruit
1 cup water
⅛ teaspoon cream of tartar
Make a sirup of the sugar and water. Boil, without stirring, to the hard-crack stage, or 300° F. Remove the saucepan from the fire and set it in an outer pan of boiling water to prevent the sirup from hardening. Add the lemon-juice. Dip the fruits, one at a time, into the hot sirup. Remove and place on an oiled paper to dry.
FRUIT DESSERTS
A straightforward hard-crack sugar coating, of the kind that turns grapes, cherries and orange sections into glassy candied fruit. The recipe is terse and leaves out one of its own ingredients, so read the points before starting.
- The hinge: dry fruitAny surface moisture makes the syrup slide off or turn cloudy and sticky. Wash and dry the fruit hours ahead, leave stems on where possible for dipping, and never dip fruit straight from the refrigerator — condensation forms as it warms.
- The missing cream of tartarIt appears in the ingredient list but never in the method. Standard practice is to add it to the syrup with the sugar and water at the start; its job is to invert a little of the sugar so the coating stays clear instead of crystallising. The lemon juice called for later does similar work, though the recipe lists both ingredients rather than treating them as alternatives.
- 300°F means 300°FUse a digital or candy thermometer. Below about 295°F the coating will be tacky rather than glassy; much above 310°F the sugar begins to colour and taste scorched. Hard crack is the last stage before caramel.
- Do not stir, and wash the sidesStirring a boiling syrup seeds crystals. Brush the inside of the pan down with a wet pastry brush, or cover it for the first minute so condensing steam does the job.
- The outer pan of boiling waterThis is a bain-marie improvised to hold the syrup workable. A heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water does the same. Keep the water level low so none splashes into the sugar.
- Adding the lemon juiceCold acid hitting 300°F sugar spits violently. Take the pan well off the heat, stand back, and add the juice down the side of the pan.
- Oiled paperA silicone mat or lightly oiled parchment. Unoiled paper may stick to the syrup as it sets.
- Yield and keepingTwo cups of sugar will coat a good deal more fruit than most cooks will dip in one sitting; work in small batches. Glacé fruit is a same-day sweet — the coating draws moisture from the fruit and from the air and goes syrupy within hours, faster still in humid weather. Damp days are the wrong days to make it.
Glacé is simply French for "iced" or "glazed," and sealing whole fruit in a shell of hard-crack sugar was long a confectioner's technique — it belongs to the same family of sugar work as spun sugar and caramel-dipped nuts, all of which depend on the cook being able to judge a boiling syrup. The thermometer reading is worth noting: the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit sits beside the older craft term "hard-crack stage," a pairing common in books of the period as household thermometers became more widely available. Glacé fruits were typical holiday and bonbon-dish fare, and the "FRUIT DESSERTS" trailing at the end appears to be a section heading or catchword from the printed page rather than part of the recipe.