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Candied Plums
Stone and cut in halves some good plums of a nice shape, lay them in a shallow dish, dredge plenty of powdered sugar over and put in a moderate oven, keeping the door closed for half an hour; then remove and lay the plums separately on glass plates to dry.
A two-step confection: a short spell in the oven to draw out juice and dissolve the sugar, then a long air-dry until the surface sets. The oven stage is brief and the drying stage is where the work actually happens.
- "Powdered sugar" in 1896In this period the term generally means granulated sugar ground fine, not today's confectioners' sugar with its added cornstarch. Superfine or caster sugar is the closer match; modern powdered sugar will work but leaves a slightly chalky bloom.
- Oven temperature'Moderate' in period cookery is usually rendered as something around 350F, though the book gives no figures. For fruit meant to dry rather than stew, 275-300F is the more controllable range; keeping the door closed, as instructed, traps steam, which may help keep the halves from scorching while the sugar dissolves into syrup.
- Choose freestone plumsItalian prune plums and other freestone varieties halve cleanly and hold their shape. Clingstone types tear as you pull the pit.
- Skin side downLay the halves cut side up in a single layer so the syrup pools in the hollow instead of running off. Crowding them makes them steam into a compote.
- The drying stage is the recipeHalf an hour in the oven only starts things. On glass plates in a warm, dry, airy place the plums need one to three days, turned once or twice, until tacky rather than wet. A dehydrator at 135F does the same job in six to ten hours.
- Humidity mattersIn a damp kitchen the sugar will never set and the fruit may ferment or mould. If the halves are still slick after a day, move them somewhere warmer or finish them in a 175F oven with the door propped.
- Yield and keepingA pound of plums, roughly 12-16 fruit, gives about a cup of candied halves. Dust with a little more sugar, layer between parchment and keep in a tin; they hold a few weeks and soften in humid weather.
- ServingThese would suit the dessert course or the after-coffee sweets, though the book does not say. They also belong on a cheese board or chopped into cake and stuffing.
Drying fruit under sugar is one of the oldest forms of preserving sweetmeats, and by the late nineteenth century large hotel kitchens commonly kept candied fruits for petits fours, garnishes and the dessert service. Oscar Tschirky's Cook Book of 1896 gathered the working methods of the Waldorf's kitchens. The instruction to keep the oven door closed and then to finish the fruit on glass plates suits a kitchen with a coal range whose heat could not be finely regulated: the oven did the dissolving, and the drying was left to the warm air of the room. Candying by successive syrup baths, as with the glace fruit still sold at Christmas, is a different and more elaborate method than this simple dredging.