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Fruit and Gelatine Candies: Color
When large amounts of candy are to be crystallized, it is well to use a syrup gauge. Syrup should be tested at a temperature of 60 degree F., and should register from 32 1/2 degree to 35 degree on the Beaume scale. Gumdrops II 1/2 pound powdered gum arabic 1 cup hot water 2 1/4 cups sugar 1 cup cold water Color Flavor Put gum arabic and hot water in double boiler, keep over hot water until dissolved, then strain. Put sugar and cold water in saucepan, stir until sugar is dissolved, wash down sides of saucepan with a butter brush dipped in cold water, and boil to 270 degree F., or until mixture cracks when tried in cold water. Set saucepan at once over hot water, add dissolved gum arabic, and leave thirty minutes. Color and flavor as desired, skim, run into starch molds, cover with starch and leave two days. Brush off starch and crystallize or hold a moment in steam from a tea kettle and roll in coarse granulated sugar. The inside of these gumdrops should be a thick syrup. Suggestions for Color and Flavor for Gumdrops Leave uncolored, use lemon extract or lemon juice. Leave uncolored, use peppermint flavor. Leave uncolored, use licorice extract. Color orange, use orange extract. Color yellow, use oil of sassafras. Color green, use oil of lime. Color red, use oil of clove. Color pink, use raspberry extract. Color pink, use rose flavor. Color pink, use wintergreen flavor. Suggestions for Shapes for Gumdrops Small cones Medium cones Large cones Bars Circles Rings Cubes Orange Gumdrops 6 1/2 tablespoons gelatine 1 cup water 1/2 cup orange juice (strained) Grated rind 1 3/4 cups sugar 1/2 cup corn syrup 1 tablespoon water 1/2 orange Soak gelatine in orange juice and one cup water until liquid is absorbed. Cook sugar, corn syrup, orange rind, and 1 tablespoon water to 240 degrees F., or until a soft ball is formed when mixture is tried in cold water. Add gelatine, stir one minute, remove from fire, and strain. Let stand five minutes, remove scum, and pour into starch molds. When firm, place in sifter, and shake or brush off superfluous starch. Crystallize as directed, or hold a moment in the steam from a teakettle, and roll in coarse granulated sugar. Raspberry or other fruit juice may be used in place of orange juice and rind. Turkish Delight 1 ounce sheet gelatine 1/2 cup cold water 2 cups sugar 1/2 cup boiling water 1/3 cup orange juice 3 tablespoons lemon juice Grated rind one orange Red color paste Break gelatine in pieces, add cold water, cover, and let soak two hours. Put sugar and boiling water in saucepan, stir until it boils, add gelatine, stir until gelatine is dissolved and occasionally while candy simmers, for twenty minutes. Add fruit juices, orange rind, and coloring if desired. Rinse a small bread pan with cold water, and pour in mixture one inch deep. Let stand until cold, remove to board, cut in cubes, and roll in confectioners' sugar. Marshmallows 2 cups sugar 1/2 cup corn syrup 1/2 cup hot water 4 tablespoons gelatine 4 tablespoons cold water Whites 2 small eggs 1 teaspoon vanilla 1 tablespoon cornstarch Put sugar, corn syrup, and hot water in saucepan, and stir until sugar is dissolved, bring to boiling point and boil without stirring to 240 degrees F., or until it forms a soft ball when tried in cold water. Remove from fire, add gelatine which has soaked in the cold water, and beat mixture until it is white. Add whites of eggs beaten until stiff, and beat candy vigorously until it gets thick and stringy. Add vanilla and cornstarch, pour into a pan nine inches square that has been dusted over with sifted confectioners' sugar, and sift confectioners' sugar over the top of the candy in the pan. Cut into squares with a silver knife that is kept moist by being dipped into water. Let candy stand overnight to dry off, then pack between layers of wax paper. Other flavors, and nuts or candied fruits cut in small pieces, may be added if desired.
Walnut Marshmallows To above recipe for Marshmallows add half a cup of finely chopped walnut meats with vanilla and cornstarch. These may be dipped in melted coating chocolate if desired.
Toasted Marshmallows I Put a marshmallow on the end of a long skewer, hatpin, or sharp pointed stick, and hold over a bed of glowing coals in the fireplace or out of doors, turning the marshmallows over and over, until golden brown on the outside and soft inside. Eat at once.
Toasted Marshmallows II Put marshmallows in a strainer, and dip quickly in and out of a kettle of water at a temperature of about 100 degrees F. Drain and put on marble slab covered with roasted cocoanut. Mix thoroughly until each marshmallow is completely coated.
To Roast Cocoanut Sprinkle shredded cocoanut on a tin baking sheet, put in the oven, stirring occasionally, and roast until a delicate brown.
Gelatine Nougat 1 cup water 4 tablespoons gelatine 1 cup sugar 1 teaspoon corn syrup White 1 egg 1 teaspoon almond extract 1/3 cup blanched almonds 1/3 cup candied cherries 1/3 cup pistachio nuts Put gelatine in saucepan, add cold water, and let stand five minutes. Add sugar and corn syrup, put over fire, and stir constantly until mixture has boiled eight minutes. Beat the egg white until stiff, add syrup slowly while beating, and then add remaining ingredients. Mix one tablespoon each of cornstarch and confectioners' sugar, and sprinkle in a bread pan. Pour in mixture, and when quite firm cut in bars and wrap in wax paper. Wintergreen Wafers 1 teaspoon gelatine 2 teaspoons cold water 3 teaspoons boiling water Few drops oil of wintergreen Confectioners' sugar Soak gelatine in cold water five minutes, dissolve in boiling water, and strain through a fine wire strainer. Add oil of wintergreen, and gradually stir in sifted confectioners' sugar until mixture is stiff enough to knead. Put candy on a board or marble slab dredged with confectioners' sugar, and knead until smooth, then roll as thin as cardboard, and cut out in discs or fancy shapes.
A block of related gelatine and gum work from a period when home candy makers still used starch molds and a syrup gauge. The techniques transfer directly, but several of the measurements and one of the flavorings need attention before you start.
- Oil of sassafras: leave it outThe yellow gumdrop suggestion calls for oil of sassafras, which is high in safrole and is no longer permitted as a food flavoring. Skip that line entirely; the other flavor suggestions on the list are fine.
- Starch molds"Run into starch molds" means a shallow tray filled with dry cornstarch, dried in a low oven and levelled, into which impressions are pressed with a plaster or wooden mold. The starch absorbs surface moisture and holds the shape; there is no substitute that gives the same domed, sanded finish, though a lightly oiled small silicone mold will hold the shape if you skip the two-day cure.
- "Crystallize as directed"This refers to the standard confectioner's method used earlier in the book: dipping the drained centers in a saturated sugar syrup and letting fine crystals grow on the surface overnight. The steam-and-roll-in-coarse-sugar alternative given here is faster and gives the familiar sanded gumdrop.
- Garbled quantitiesThe ingredient lists have been mangled in transcription. 'Gumdrops II' is the recipe's number, so the gum arabic quantity is simply 1/2 pound, which is consistent with the 2 1/4 cups sugar; the stray '1/2 orange' belongs with the 'Grated rind' line. The one figure that looks genuinely doubtful is the '6 1/2 tablespoons gelatine' in the Orange Gumdrops -- that much in about 1 1/2 cups of liquid would set rubbery, so treat it as suspect and work from a modern proportion.
- Temperatures270F is the low end of soft crack, 240F is soft ball. Use a candy thermometer rather than the cold-water test; the gumdrop syrup in particular has a narrow window, and the finished centers are meant to stay as a thick syrup inside a firm skin.
- Baume and the syrup gauge32 1/2 to 35 Baume at 60F is the heavy, near-saturated syrup used for sanding candies, roughly 61 to 66 percent sugar by weight. A modern refractometer or Brix hydrometer reads the same syrup at about 61 to 66 Brix.
- Sheet gelatineOne ounce of sheet gelatine for the Turkish delight is about 28 g, or roughly 14 modern gold leaves; modern leaf is thinner and graded by bloom, so weigh rather than count. The two-hour cold soak suits the old thick sheet product; modern leaf needs only five to ten minutes, as does powdered.
- Raw egg whiteIn the marshmallows and the gelatine nougat the whites never reach a pasteurizing temperature. Use pasteurized whites, or whites from a carton, if the candy is for children or anyone with a compromised immune system.
- Oils versus extractsOil of clove, lime and wintergreen are many times stronger than the alcohol extracts listed alongside them. Add them a drop at a time from the tip of a skewer and taste the syrup before molding.
- YieldThe book gives no yields; expect something in the region of a pound and a half of candy from the gum arabic batch, rather less from the smaller Orange Gumdrops. The marshmallow mixture fills a nine-inch square pan, which cut on a 6x6 or 7x7 grid gives 36 to 49 squares.
Gum arabic, the dried sap of Acacia trees traded out of Sudan and the Sahel for millennia, is what gives the first recipe its name: gum drops were originally gum candies, thickened with acacia rather than gelatine, and the older gum paste centers stayed pleasantly syrupy inside their crystallized shell. Over the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries gelatine increasingly displaced gum arabic in confectionery, being cheaper, faster to set and free of the bark and grit that had to be strained out, and the recipes here sit on that hinge, with a gum arabic version followed immediately by gelatine ones. Turkish delight is the Ottoman rahat lokum, traditionally set with starch rather than gelatine and reaching English readers through travel writing and imported boxes; the version given here is an Anglo-American shortcut. The starch molding described throughout is the domestic counterpart of the industrial mogul process, in which candy plants stamped impressions into trays of dried cornstarch and deposited syrup into them by machine.