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Glaces and Pulled Flowers
WHEN sugar and water are boiled to a high temperature with an acid, as cream of tartar or lemon juice, part of the sugar is changed to glucose, and with careful treatment the syrup will remain clear and become very hard. When swung from a bunch of wires, fine threads fly off which look like spun glass. This is called spun sugar. All kinds of nuts and fruits may be dipped in the syrup while it is hot. On a cold day they harden immediately, and remain dry a long time. In warm, damp weather they become sticky and unsatisfactory. They may be rolled in granulated sugar if the weather changes after they have been made. Candy baskets and flowers require much experience for perfect results, but much pleasure and many attractive pieces may be attained by experimenting with a syrup boiled to the highest temperature it can reach without burning. It is wise to color the syrup before it boils, as stirring color paste into the mixture after it has cooked is liable to make it sugary. Candy left over from spun sugar or flowers can be warmed by setting the saucepan on an asbestos mat on the range, and then can be poured out in a thin sheet on a warm tin, and broken in pieces when brittle. Glace Nuts 2 cups sugar 1 cup boiling water 1/3 teaspoon cream of tartar Put ingredients in a smooth saucepan, stir, place on range, and heat to boiling point. Wash off sugar which adheres to sides of saucepan with a butter brush dipped in cold water, and boil without stirring to 310 degrees F., or until syrup begins to discolor. Remove saucepan at once from fire, and place in a larger pan of cold water to instantly stop the boiling. Remove from cold water, and place in a saucepan of hot water. Take nuts separately on long pins or steel skewers, or with a small pair of tweezers, dip in syrup to cover, remove from syrup, and place on a tin sheet.
A hard-crack sugar coating with an acid added to prevent crystallisation. The chemistry is sound; only the equipment and a few habits need updating.
- The hinge: 310F and no stirringOnce the syrup boils, stirring or a stray sugar crystal on the pan wall will seed the whole batch and turn it grainy. Wash the sides down with a wet pastry brush, then leave it alone until the thermometer reads 310F (154C), the hard-crack stage. The instruction to stop at the first hint of colour is the practical signal; past about 320F the sugar begins to caramelise and turns bitter.
- Why the cream of tartar is thereThe acid inverts part of the sucrose into glucose and fructose, which interfere with crystal formation and keep the finished coat glassy. A third of a teaspoon to two cups of sugar is the right order of magnitude; more will make the syrup stubbornly soft and sticky.
- Asbestos matDo not use one. A flame tamer or heat-diffuser disc does the same job of gentling the heat under a pan of set sugar.
- "Range," "smooth saucepan," "butter brush"The range is the stovetop. A smooth saucepan means one with no scratches or pitting inside, since rough spots nucleate crystals; heavy stainless is ideal. A butter brush is simply a small pastry brush, kept for this purpose and clean.
- The shock bath and the hot bathBoth steps matter. Plunging the base into cold water stops carry-over cooking within seconds; moving it into a pan of hot water afterwards keeps the syrup fluid at dipping consistency instead of setting hard in the pan. Water in a hot-sugar pan spits, so lower it gently.
- ColouringThe advice to colour before boiling still holds. Use a few drops of gel or paste colour at the start; adding it to finished syrup means stirring, and stirring means crystals.
- Humidity is not a small pointHard-crack sugar is hygroscopic and will go tacky quickly on a humid day. Work when the air is dry, dip onto parchment or a silicone mat rather than bare tin, and store the finished nuts in an airtight tin with a desiccant packet.
- Tools and burnsLong steel skewers or fine tongs are still the best dippers; a two-tined chocolate fork also works. Syrup at 310F clings to skin and causes deep burns, so keep a bowl of ice water within reach and do this without children underfoot.
- YieldTwo cups of sugar makes a generous quantity of syrup; the recipe gives no yield figure. The headnote's note on rewarming leftover candy and pouring it out as a brittle sheet is one way to use what is not needed.
Glacé work and spun sugar belong to the confectioner's repertoire that filtered into American domestic cookery around the turn of the twentieth century, when cooking schools began teaching sugar boiling by thermometer rather than by the older finger tests of thread, ball, crack and caramel. The vocabulary here of degrees Fahrenheit and cream of tartar reflects that shift: what had been a professional craft judged by eye was being written down for a competent home cook with a candy thermometer and a reliable stove. Sugared and dipped nuts themselves are much older, and confectioners' baskets and pulled-sugar flowers, mentioned in the headnote, were the showpiece of the nineteenth-century dessert table, spun and pulled while the sugar was still warm and pliable. The frank admission that such pieces require much experience is a fair one; the dipped nut is the beginner's end of the same technique.