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Glazed Fruits
Put in a copper sugar-boiler over the fire one pound of loaf-sugar with one gill of cold water and boil until the top is covered with large bubbles, then drop a little of it into cold water; if when it is cold it breaks with a snap, it is ready. The sides of the boiler must be wiped occasionally with a wet cloth to free them from sugar, and the sugar closely watched lest it boil beyond the point indicated. Remove the boiler from the fire and glaze the fruits by dipping them into the sugar and then laying them on a dish slightly coated with salad oil.
This is a hard-crack sugar glaze, the same technique behind candied fruit and spun sugar. The whole recipe turns on reading the syrup correctly and on the fruit being bone dry.
- The measurementsOne gill is half a cup. One pound of loaf sugar is about 2 1/4 cups granulated sugar; loaf sugar was refined sugar broken from a cone, and modern granulated is its direct descendant.
- The temperature the recipe is describingSyrup that snaps cleanly when cooled in water is at the hard-crack stage, 300-310F. A candy thermometer removes the guesswork, though the cold-water test remains reliable if you pull the pan off the heat while testing.
- The vesselA copper sugar-boiler was prized because copper conducts heat evenly, and sugar boilers were left untinned, tin melting at temperatures close to those sugar reaches. Any heavy-bottomed saucepan with a pouring lip works; avoid thin pans, which will caramelize the syrup in patches before it reaches temperature.
- Why the sides get wipedSugar crystals clinging above the syrup line will seed the whole batch and turn it grainy. A pastry brush dipped in water is easier than a cloth. Do not stir once the sugar has dissolved.
- The fruit must be dryThis is the hinge. Any surface moisture makes the glaze cloudy and causes the syrup to spit violently. Grapes, cherries with stems, orange and mandarin segments and whole strawberries all need to be wiped completely dry; cut fruit that weeps juice will not hold a glaze at all.
- Working timeThe syrup begins stiffening as soon as it leaves the heat, so work fast and return the pan briefly to low heat if it thickens. Dip with a fork or a skewer rather than your fingers, which sugar at this temperature will burn badly.
- The oiled dishSalad oil in this period usually meant olive oil, though any bland oil serves; it keeps the cooling glaze from bonding to the plate. Parchment or a silicone mat does the same job with less residue.
- Humidity and keepingHard sugar draws water from the air, so glazed fruit made on a damp day soon turns tacky. Eat the same day; refrigeration makes it worse, not better.
Glazed fruits belong to the confectioner's end of the old hotel kitchen, where a pastry brigade produced sugar work for banquet tables: spun-sugar baskets, nougatine, dipped grapes and orange sections set out as petits fours or ranged around an ice. Oscar Tschirky published this collection in 1896 while maitre d'hotel at the Waldorf. The cold-water test he describes long predates thermometers in professional kitchens and is still taught; the sequence of stages from thread through soft ball to hard crack was a mainstay gauge of temperature for confectioners well into the nineteenth century, though sugar thermometers were already in use in parts of the trade. Loaf sugar, specified here, signals fully refined sugar at a time when cheaper grades still carried molasses and would have muddied the glaze.