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Colored Sugars
Rub the required quantity of powdered sugar through a fine sieve onto a piece of paper, turn it into a round-bottomed pan, place it on the stove to warm, stir it well until the sugar is nearly dry, turn it out, and it is ready for use.
A pastry-department utility procedure rather than a dish: the point is to dry tinted sugar without melting it. Note that the coloring itself is assumed rather than stated, since the original sits among the kitchen's other base preparations.
- The missing stepAs printed, no color is mentioned. The working method is to add liquid or paste coloring a drop at a time to the sugar and rub it through the sieve until the tint is even, then dry it as directed. Use modern food coloring; nineteenth-century kitchens sometimes reached for mineral pigments that have no place in food.
- Powdered sugarIn 1896 this means finely ground sugar, closer to what is now sold as caster or superfine. Modern confectioners' sugar contains 3 to 5 percent cornstarch, which dries faster but gives a chalkier, less sparkling grain. Superfine granulated gives a result nearer the original.
- "Place it on the stove to warm"The lowest possible heat, or a very low oven. Keep it gentle: sugar allowed to get too hot will begin to brown and the color will dull.
- Round-bottomed panA sugar pan or any bowl-shaped copper or stainless pan, chosen so a spoon can reach every part with no square corner to hold a scorching pocket. A wide skillet works if the sugar is kept moving.
- "Nearly dry"Stop while there is still the faintest trace of dampness, as the text directs, rather than driving it further on the heat. It finishes drying on the paper as it cools.
- FinishWhen cold, rubbing the sugar through the sieve a second time will break any clumps formed while drying, though the recipe does not call for it.
- StorageSealed in a jar away from humidity it keeps for months. It will cake if the kitchen is damp, and sieving again restores it.
Colored sugars belong to the decorative side of the Gilded Age hotel kitchen, where the pastry department turned out iced petits fours, spun-sugar baskets, and elaborately banded cakes that had to look impressive down the length of a banquet table. The 1896 Oscar Tschirky book is generally understood to draw on the Waldorf's own recipes, which may be why entries like this one read as shop notes rather than instructions for a home cook: it assumes the reader already knows what color is going in and only needs the drying technique. A large kitchen making its own could match a specific shade to a specific order, and the coloring agents of the period ranged from harmless cochineal and caramel to compounds that later food laws removed from sale.