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Fruit and Gelatine Candies: Prepare
Apricot Marshmallows Prepare Apricot Paste. Cut marshmallows in two pieces crosswise, or cut circles one inch in diameter from a sheet of marsh-mallow. Dip marshmallows one at a time in the fruit paste before it stiffens, and place on wax paper. When all are dipped, roll in granulated sugar.
Green Gage Marshmallows Prepare Green Gage Paste, and proceed as in recipe for Apricot Marshmallows. Fruit Marshmallows Prepare Apple Paste, flavor with lime and color green. Proceed as in recipe for Apricot Marshmallows.
Apricot Marshmallow Squares Prepare Apricot Paste, and pour half of it one fourth inch deep in a square pan which has been rinsed in cold water and not dried, or between candy bars. Cover with a piece of sheet marshmallow the same size as the pan, and pour remaining paste over the marshmallow. When firm, cut in squares and roll in granulated sugar.
This is an assembly recipe: it assumes you have already made one of the fruit pastes given elsewhere in the book, and it lives or dies on catching that paste at the right moment.
- The hinge: work fastFruit paste made with gelatine or pectin sets as it cools, and once it skins over it will drag rather than coat. Keep the pan over hot (not boiling) water while you dip, and stop to rewarm rather than fighting a thickening batch.
- Fruit pasteThe apricot, green gage and apple pastes referred to are given elsewhere in the book; from the chapter heading they appear to be cooked fruit purée boiled with sugar and set with gelatine — closer to a soft pâte de fruits than to jam or fruit butter. Commercial preserves are unlikely to substitute, having neither the sugar concentration nor the setting agent to firm up.
- Green gageA small greenish-gold dessert plum, common in early twentieth-century American and English kitchens and still grown, though rarely stocked in supermarkets. A ripe, tart yellow-green plum should give a similar result.
- Sheet marshmallowPeriod confectioners poured marshmallow into a shallow starch-dusted or sugared pan and cut rounds and slabs from the sheet. Modern bagged marshmallows are the cylinders the recipe describes cutting crosswise; for the squares version, either pour your own sheet or press cut marshmallows tightly together into a layer.
- Candy barsNot confectionery bars — these are the heavy metal or wooden strips confectioners arranged on a slab to make an adjustable frame for pouring. A square baking pan, as the recipe allows, does the same job.
- The unrinsed panRinsing in cold water and leaving it wet keeps the paste from bonding to the metal. It is a genuine trick and worth following; parchment is the modern equivalent but changes the surface texture of the finished slab.
- Sugaring and settingThe recipe rolls the pieces in granulated sugar once all have been dipped; the coating wants to be tacky-dry rather than wet, since sugar added too early dissolves into syrup and too late will not adhere.
Marshmallow and fruit paste were the two workhorses of the early twentieth-century American candy kitchen, and this page is essentially a lesson in combining them. Both had been reinvented within living memory of the book's readers: the confection once made from the mucilage of the marsh mallow root had, by the end of the nineteenth century, largely given way to gelatine-and-sugar formulas that were cheaper, more reliable, and could be poured in sheets and cut to size. Fruit pastes descend from the much older tradition of European fruit cheeses and pâtes de fruits, boiled down to preserve the harvest and set firm enough to slice. Recipes like these — dip, coat, cut in squares — belong to a period when home candy-making was promoted as an accomplishment for young women and a wholesome alternative to store-bought sweets, and when a well-stocked kitchen was expected to keep vegetable colorings and a marble slab close at hand.