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Dried Peaches
Cut some peaches into halves and put them in a preserving-pan with some syrup at twenty-two degrees; let them simmer for a few minutes till the skins can be easily removed; take them out, peel, and put them back in the syrup; boil for a few minutes, then turn all into a basin and let it remain till the following day. Drain the syrup off the peaches, boil it up again, then pour it over them. Repeat this for the two following days. Put the peaches on drainers, dip a camel's hair-brush in prepared cochineal or carmine, paint the peaches lightly over and set them in the screen to dry. Boil one and one-half pounds of sugar to the pearl degree, drain the juice of a lemon in with it and work the sugar at the side of the pan with a spoon until it becomes whitish, then put in the peaches and shake them gently about. Take each piece out with a fork, arrange them on a brass drainer and set them in the screen at a moderate heat to dry. In about an hour's time, pack the peaches in cardboard boxes with a sheet of white paper between each layer.
This is candied fruit by the classic confectioner's method: the peaches are drawn into a syrup that is strengthened a little each day, then finished with a grained sugar crust. The vocabulary is all from the professional pastry kitchen of the 1890s.
- Syrup "at twenty-two degrees"That is 22 degrees Baume, read on a syrup hydrometer or saccharometer, and works out to roughly 40 percent sugar by weight, about 400 g sugar dissolved in 600 g water. A refractometer reading near 40 Brix gets you to the same place.
- The hinge: slow, graduated soakingThe point of draining, reboiling and repouring the syrup over four days is that each boiling concentrates it slightly, so sugar enters the fruit gradually. Sugar the peaches too fast and they shrivel, toughen and weep syrup instead of turning translucent.
- "Pearl degree"An old sugar-boiling stage just past thread, placed by most sources somewhere between about 220F and 230F (105-110C), when the boiling surface throws up small round bubbles like pearls. Period sources disagree on the exact point, so watch a thermometer and take the low end.
- Working the sugar whiteStirring the lemoned syrup against the side of the pan seeds crystallisation and makes it turn opaque. It sets quickly, so have the drained peaches and the fork ready before you start; if it grains too hard to use it must be warmed again with a little water.
- Preserving-panA wide, shallow pan with a large evaporating surface. Unlined copper was the traditional vessel, including for acid fruit, though prolonged contact with lemon juice is best avoided; stainless steel is the easier modern choice.
- Cochineal and carmineCarmine is the pigment extracted from the cochineal insect and is still a legal food colour (E120), sold as a liquid or powder. Nineteenth-century "prepared cochineal" was often cut with ammonia or alum, so buy a modern food-grade product, and note that carmine causes reactions in a small number of people.
- The "screen" and the brushThe screen was a warm drying closet above or beside the range, running at perhaps 120-140F (50-60C). A food dehydrator on its lowest setting, or an oven at its lowest with the door propped, does the same work. Use a natural-bristle pastry brush for the colour.
- Yield, packing and keepingPacking and keeping -- The recipe gives no quantity of fruit, only one and a half pounds of sugar for the final coating, so scale to what you have. Pack only when the crust is dry to the touch, interleave with parchment rather than plain paper, and keep cool and dry; trapped moisture will dissolve the glaze and invite mould.
Oscar Tschirky's 1896 book was compiled while he was maitre d'hotel at the Waldorf, and its confectionery pages read like the notebook of a French-trained pastry department, because that is broadly what they were: sugar degrees, drying screens, brass drainers and boxes lined with white paper all belong to the trade practice of the professional confiseur, not to home cooking. Candied fruit of this kind was a luxury item sold and given as a gift, and the painted blush is the giveaway that appearance was half the product; the fruit loses its colour in the syrup, so the confectioner put it back with carmine, the crimson extracted from dried cochineal insects and long the standard red of both the kitchen and the dye house. That a hotel steward expected his readers to own a syrup hydrometer, and to know what the pearl degree looked like, says a good deal about who these late-Victorian "cook books" were really addressed to.