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Crystallized Fruits: Orange
Candied Orange Peel Remove the peel in lengthwise sections from four oranges, cover with cold water, bring to the boiling point, and cook slowly until soft and tender. Drain, remove the fibrous inside portion, and with the scissors cut peel in thin narrow strips. In a saucepan put one cup of sugar and half a cup of water, and boil until syrup will spin a thread when allowed to drip from the tip of a spoon. Put strips of orange peel into the syrup, and cook until clear. Remove to plate, let stand until cool, and roll in granulated sugar. Orange Balls Remove peel from several oranges, cover peel with cold water, and leave for three days, changing the water daily. Put in hot water, and boil until soft, drain, wipe dry with cheesecloth, chop fine, and measure. Take an equal amount of sugar, and for each one third cup of sugar add two tablespoons each of water and butter, and boil until it will spin a thread. Add chopped peel, boil until it forms a firm ball when tried in cold water, cool, put on a board, sprinkle with granulated sugar, and shape into small balls. These may be rolled in coarse sugar, and allowed to dry or they may be dipped in fondant flavored with vanilla. They are delicious dipped in chocolate, with a few grains of orange sugar sprinkled on the top of each chocolate before it hardens.
Two related sweets from the same starting point: orange peel boiled until tender, then cooked in syrup. A candy thermometer removes nearly all the guesswork the original leaves in place.
- The hinge: get the bitterness out firstThe long boil (and, for the balls, three days of daily water changes) exists to leach the bitter compounds from the white pith. Rush it and the finished candy is harsh, no matter how much sugar goes in. Modern thick-skinned navel oranges may want two or three changes of boiling water rather than one.
- "Spin a thread"This is the thread stage, 230-235F on a candy thermometer. Syrup dripped from a spoon trails a fine thread rather than falling in drops.
- "A firm ball when tried in cold water"Firm-ball stage, 244-248F. A spoonful dropped into cold water forms a ball that holds its shape but still yields to pressure.
- Peel quantityFour oranges will give something on the order of a cup or so of trimmed strips, which one cup of sugar and half a cup of water should cover. For the orange balls the recipe is explicitly proportional by volume, so measure the chopped peel first and match it with sugar.
- Removing the fibrous insideAfter boiling, the pith scrapes away easily with the back of a spoon. Leave a thin layer if you want a plumper strip; strip it clean for a more translucent, glassy result.
- Butter in the orange ballsTwo tablespoons of butter per third-cup of sugar is a large proportion, which will keep the cooked mass pliable enough to shape. Expect something softer and more fudge-like than a hard candy.
- Drying and storingSugared peel needs several hours on a rack in dry air before it stops weeping. Once dry it keeps well in an airtight tin; the chocolate-dipped balls are best eaten sooner.
- YieldThe candied peel from four oranges fills a small tin. The orange balls give no fixed yield, since the recipe calls only for 'several oranges' and scales to whatever peel you measure.
Candying citrus peel is one of the oldest uses of sugar in European cooking, predating chocolate confectionery by centuries; peel was preserved in syrup partly for sweetmeats and partly as a medicine, and Renaissance banquet books list it alongside candied roots and seeds. By the time this book was written, oranges were arriving in American cities in quantity from Florida and California, and a household that ate the fruit had a steady supply of peel it would otherwise throw out. The raw material is free, and the only real costs are sugar and patience. The orange balls call for a three-day soak in changed water to draw out bitterness, one of two different treatments the book offers.