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Strawberry Drops
Pass a quantity of ripe strawberries through a fine hair sieve, and mix with them some coarsely sifted sugar. Put the paste into a sugar-boiler with a lip to it, and stir it over the fire until boiling; then let the drops fall slowly from the lip of the pan on to a baking-sheet, leaving a small space between each. When cold, place the drops onto a sieve, and dry them in a hot closet. Keep them packed in canisters.
A Victorian confectioner's drop: fruit purée cooked with sugar until it sets, piped in coins and dried. The original assumes you already know the proportions, so the sugar-to-purée ratio is the one thing you must supply yourself.
- No proportions givenThe recipe never states how much sugar to how much fruit, and the result depends entirely on it. Comparable confectionery recipes of the period vary widely, with sugar often equal to or greater than the weight of pulp; anything much leaner will not set into a dry drop.
- Sugar-boiler with a lipAn unlined copper pan with a pouring spout, of the kind often kept for sugar work alone. A small heavy saucepan with a good pouring lip does the same job; a stainless pan is easier to judge colour in than copper.
- Fine hair sieveA sieve of woven horsehair, standard equipment before fine metal mesh was cheap; it is often said to have been preferred for acid fruit because metal discoloured it. A fine nylon or stainless mesh sieve is the equivalent, and pressing the berries through it rather than blending them keeps the seeds out.
- Coarsely sifted sugarMost likely sugar passed through a coarse sieve to break lumps rather than a coarse crystal — ordinary granulated sugar. Caster sugar dissolves faster and is if anything preferable here.
- Judging the boil"Stir it over the fire until boiling" understates it: the paste has to lose enough water to set. A thermometer helps — somewhere around the small-ball stage (roughly 240F) is a sensible target — and it is worth stopping stirring once the sugar has dissolved to avoid graining the mixture.
- Dropping the dropsThe paste stiffens as it cools, so the pan has to be poured while genuinely hot and the drops laid down quickly. Line the sheet with parchment or a silicone mat rather than pouring onto bare metal, and expect them to spread to about the diameter of a coin.
- The hot closetA warm cupboard beside the range, used for slow drying rather than baking. An oven at its lowest setting with the door ajar gives much the same effect; the drops should dry firm over several hours without colouring.
- StorageCanisters mattered because these drops are hygroscopic and go sticky in damp air. An airtight tin with the layers separated by parchment is essential, and they will not keep well in a humid kitchen.
Fruit "drops" were a staple of the nineteenth-century professional confectioner: a sieved fruit pulp boiled with sugar, dropped from a spouted pan, dried, and sold or stored as a sweetmeat. They belong to the same family as the lemon and raspberry drops of Victorian sweetshops, and the technique is related to that of the pâte de fruit and the modern fruit pastille, though sugared fruit pastes long predate the Victorian sweetshop. The instructions here read as a working note rather than a domestic recipe — the hair sieve, the sugar-boiler kept solely for sugar work, the hot closet and the canisters are all fittings of a professional kitchen, and the vocabulary is British.