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Grapes Glazed with Sugar
Boil some syrup as for candying; add half a teaspoonful of cream of tartar. Divide a few bunches of grapes into clusters, dip them into the candy, and lay them until dry on dishes slightly greased.
Two lines of instruction that assume you already know sugar work. Everything here depends on the temperature of the syrup and the dryness of the fruit.
- What "syrup as for candying" meansA plain sugar-and-water syrup, boiled without stirring to what period books called the candy or crack stage, in modern terms somewhere around 300F. The recipe gives no quantities. Below that stage the coating stays tacky and weeps; much above it the sugar begins to color and taste burnt.
- The cream of tartar is not optionalThe half teaspoon the recipe calls for inverts part of the sucrose and keeps the glaze from seizing into an opaque, grainy mass. It is the difference between a clear shell and a white crust.
- The hinge: dry grapesAny water on the skins will spit violently in 300F sugar and ruin the coating. Wash the clusters well ahead, pat each grape dry, and let them sit at room temperature until there is no trace of moisture at the stems. Cold fruit straight from the refrigerator will sweat.
- Small clusters, held by the stemDivide the bunches into small clusters, left on their stems so you have a handle. Dip, let the excess run back into the pan for a second or two, then set down.
- Greased dishes, or betterA lightly oiled marble slab, or a silicone mat, releases the hardened glaze more reliably than a greased plate. Oscar's "slightly greased" is the period equivalent.
- Off the heat, the syrup sets fastKeep the pan over the lowest possible flame or in a bowl of hot water while you work, otherwise you will get through only a few clusters before it stiffens. Reheating gently to loosen it is fine; boiling it again will darken it.
- Serve the same daySugar glaze pulls moisture from the fruit and from the air. These are at their best within a few hours and are unpleasantly sticky by the next morning. Do not refrigerate or cover them.
Glazed and "disguised" fruits — fruits déguisés — were standard French confectionery long before Oscar Tschirky put them in his 1896 Cook Book, and they belonged to the end of a formal dinner alongside candied peel, marrons and bonbons. The brevity of the instruction is itself informative: a trained pastry cook reading "syrup as for candying" needed no further guidance on stages, which were commonly judged by dropping a bead into cold water, though sugar thermometers were also available by this date. Cream of tartar was a common guard against crystallization, and glucose was used to the same end in commercial confectionery. Grapes suited the treatment because they need no peeling, coring or precooking.