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Dried Fruits and Nuts: Sugared
Sugared Peanuts 1 cup shelled roasted peanuts 1 cup sugar 1/2 cup water 1/2 teaspoon vanilla Remove brown skins from peanuts, put nuts in a saucepan, and keep in a warm place. Put sugar and water in another saucepan, stir until sugar is dissolved, and boil without stirring to 238 degrees F., or until candy forms a soft ball when tried in cold water. Hold pan of peanuts several inches above the fire and shake vigorously while slowly pouring syrup over the nuts. Occasionally stir the nuts, then add remaining syrup drop by drop until all is used. Nuts should be evenly covered with a coating of sugar. If coating is not thick enough, more sugar and water may be boiled and added as before. Sugared Almonds 1 cup shelled almonds 1 cup sugar 1/2 cup water 1/2 teaspoon vanilla Proceed as in making Sugared Peanuts, blanching the almonds or not, as preferred.
This is the classic sanding or pralinage method: hot syrup is agitated against warm nuts until it crystallizes into a dry white shell. Two details decide whether it works, and the original leaves both slightly implicit.
- The hinge is agitation, not heatThe sugar coating forms because constant shaking forces the supersaturated syrup to crystallize as it cools on the nut. Shake and stir without pause from the first spoonful of syrup; stop moving the pan and you get a sticky glaze that sets into one solid mass.
- Keep the nuts warm and dryThe original says only "a warm place"; a low oven or a spot near the stove will serve. Cold or damp nuts chill the syrup on contact and it sets in lumps rather than sanding evenly.
- 238F is not optional238F, or the soft-ball test the recipe offers as an alternative -- Use a candy thermometer rather than the cold-water test if you have one. Below the soft-ball range the syrup stays tacky; much above it, it hardens before it can be spread over the nuts.
- "Above the fire"Written for an open gas flame or a range top. Hold the pan several inches over low heat, or simply work off the heat on a heatproof surface and return the pan briefly to the warm burner if the mixture stiffens. A wide skillet or sauté pan gives more room to toss than a saucepan.
- When to add the vanillaThe original never says. Stir it into the syrup after it comes off the heat — added earlier it boils away, and it will spit if poured onto the hot syrup while still on the flame.
- Roasted peanuts and raw almondsThe peanuts are already roasted, so the sugar is doing all the work. Almonds in this recipe are raw; toast them at 350F for 8-10 minutes and cool before coating, or the finished sweet tastes flat. Blanching (30 seconds in boiling water, then slip the skins) gives the white, wedding-favor look; skins on are more flavorful.
- Skinning roasted peanutsRub a handful at a time between your palms or in a dish towel, then tip the loose skins away. A gentle breeze or a hairdryer on cool makes short work of the papery bits.
- Yield and keepingAbout 2 cups, enough for eight or so as a nibble. Cool in a single layer on parchment, breaking up clusters as they set, and store airtight — sanded sugar picks up humidity and turns tacky within a day or two in a damp kitchen.
Sugar-sanded nuts are one of the oldest sweets in the European confectioner's repertoire, and the technique here is a simplified home version of what French confiseurs call pralinage, a rough crystallized sanding rather than the smooth panning that produces the sugared almond dragée. What marks this page as American and early twentieth century is the peanut. Once cheap and abundant after the Civil War, and roasted on street carts by the bagful, peanuts became the everyday substitute for the almond in candy books of this era, and a recipe that gives peanuts first and almonds as the variation would have been unthinkable a century earlier. The precise 238F also dates it: a cookbook author could now give a number alongside the older soft-ball test in cold water, though the retention of that test suggests a thermometer could not simply be assumed in every kitchen.