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Fruit and Gelatine Candies: Marshmallow
Green Gage Marshmallow Squares Prepare Green Gage Paste, and proceed as in Apricot Marshmallow Squares. Fruit Marshmallow Squares Prepare Apple Paste, and proceed as in Apricot Marshmallow Squares. Mint Jelly Bonbons 6 apples 2 cups water 3/4 cup sugar 2 tablespoons gelatine 4 tablespoons cold water Few drops oil of peppermint Green color paste Wipe apples, and cut in quarters, add two cups cold water, and cook until very soft. Drain through cheesecloth; there should be one cup of juice. Put in saucepan and boil ten minutes; add sugar, boil five minutes, add gelatine which has been soaked in four tablespoons cold water, stir until gelatine is dissolved, and remove from fire. Flavor with two or three drops of oil of peppermint, color green, and pour into a bread pan. When firm, cut in small cubes, and roll in granulated sugar, or dip in melted coating chocolate. Orange Pastilles 1 1/6 cups confectioners' sugar 6 tablespoons cold water 1/2 tablespoon corn syrup 1 tablespoon gelatine 2 tablespoons orange juice Orange color paste Put half a cup of confectioners' sugar and two tablespoons cold water in saucepan; When dissolved, add corn syrup, bring to boiling point, then add gelatine soaked in four tablespoons cold water, the orange juice, and orange color paste to color delicately. Sift the remaining sugar on a platter, pour mixture into the center, and allow it to cool. Then work with a broad spatula until it begins to get thick and smooth. Pat and spread into a layer one inch thick, allow it to harden, then cut into squares, and roll in orange sugar. Gumdrops I 6 1/2 level tablespoons granulated gelatine 1 tablespoon water 1 1/3 cups sugar 1/2 cup corn syrup 1 1/4 cups cold water 3 tablespoons lemon juice Soak gelatine in one and one fourth cups water until liquid is absorbed. Put sugar, corn syrup and one tablespoon water in saucepan, stir until mixed, bring to boiling point, and boil without stirring to 240 degree F., or until mixture forms a soft ball when tried in cold water. Add gelatine, stir over fire one minute, add lemon juice, strain, and let stand five minutes in a cool place. Mold in cornstarch. Impressions the size and shape of a gumdrop can be made with the round end of the handle of a vegetable knife. When firm, place in sifter, and shake and brush off superfluous starch or flour. Crystallize as directed in following recipe, or hold a moment in the steam from a teakettle, and roll in coarse granulated sugar.
One teaspoon raspberry extract and pink color paste, or four teaspoons orange extract and orange color paste, or a few drops oil of lime and green color paste, may be added when mixture is removed from the fire, to give a variety of gumdrops.
To Crystallize Candies 4 cups sugar 2 cups water Gumdrops or bonbons Put sugar and water in saucepan, stir until dissolved and boil without stirring to 224 degree F., or until syrup forms a very soft ball that will not hold its shape when tried in cold water. Remove from fire and set saucepan in a dish of cold water, cover with a damp cloth, and let stand until lukewarm. Do not disturb the syrup in any way, as it very easily becomes sugary. Place candies that are to be crystallized in shallow cake pans, gently pour on syrup until the candies are covered, cover pan with a tin cover, and set away to crystallize for ten or twelve hours, or until crystals are visible all over the candies. Tip the pans until the syrup runs out. Leave the candies until dry, then pack in wax paper.
A cluster of gelatine confections from a school-of-cookery book, written for cooks who already owned a candy thermometer and a starch tray. The measurements are sound but several depend on recipes printed elsewhere in the book, and one ingredient list does not agree with its own method.
- The hinge: pectin and gelatine are doing different jobsThe hinge: pectin and gelatine are both at work -- The mint jelly bonbons use juice cooked from whole quartered fruit, skins, cores and all, which is where the pectin lives, and that adds body; but with two tablespoons of gelatine to one cup of juice, the gelatine is doing most of the setting.
- Cross-referenced recipesGreen Gage Paste, Apple Paste and Apricot Marshmallow Squares are separate entries in the same book. Without them the first two lines here are unusable on their own. A green gage is a greengage plum, small, round and amber-green when ripe.
- Gelatine amountsOne modern envelope of powdered gelatine is about 1 tablespoon, or 7 g. The gumdrops call for 6 1/2 level tablespoons, roughly six and a half envelopes, which is correct for a firm chewy gumdrop rather than a dessert jelly. Level the spoon: heaped measures here turn the batch rubbery.
- A discrepancy in the pastillesReading the pastille list -- The list and the method agree. The 6 tablespoons cold water is 2 tablespoons to dissolve the sugar plus 4 tablespoons to soak the gelatine, and the odd 1 1/6 cups of confectioners' sugar is 1/2 cup for the syrup plus 2/3 cup sifted onto the platter.
- Sugar temperatures240F for the gumdrop syrup is soft-ball and is worth checking with a thermometer rather than the cold-water test. The 224F crystallizing syrup is a thread-to-very-soft-ball stage; a few degrees over and it grains in the pan instead of on the candy.
- Oil of peppermint and oil of limeThese are essential oils, several times stronger than the extracts sold in the baking aisle. Two or three drops is genuinely the dose. Where the recipe names an extract instead, as with the raspberry and orange gumdrops, teaspoons are correct.
- Molding in cornstarchFill a shallow pan an inch deep with plain cornstarch dried in a low oven and cooled, level it, then press the impressions. Damp starch will not release. The starch can be sifted and reused.
- Vessels and coatingsA bread pan is a standard loaf tin; the mint jelly sets about an inch deep in one. Coating chocolate means couverture or a tempering chocolate, not chocolate chips.
- Weather and yieldWeather -- Gelatine candies pick up moisture, so work on a dry day and store in wax paper as the recipe directs. Neither recipe gives a yield.
The Candy Cook Book came out of the Boston domestic-science tradition, and its confections are laid out the way lessons are: a base recipe followed by variations that tell you to go back and prepare a paste from an earlier page. The gumdrops and pastilles here mark a transition in American candy-making. Older pastille and gumdrop recipes were set with gum arabic, a tree resin that had to be soaked overnight and strained, and the 'gum' of gumdrop is traditionally traced to it; by the 1910s inexpensive granulated gelatine was widely used in its place in home kitchens, giving a chewier, more elastic sweet. The cornstarch tray is a domestic version of the commercial mogul process, in which impressions pressed into a bed of dried starch served as disposable molds, a method generally traced to European confectioners of the mid-nineteenth century. The greengage plum, meanwhile, is traditionally said to be named for Sir William Gage, who is credited with introducing the French reine-claude to England in the eighteenth century.