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Preserved Citron
Boil the citron in water until it is clear and soft enough to be easily pierced with a fork; take out, put into a nice syrup of sugar and water, and boil until the sugar has penetrated it. Take out and spread on dishes to dry slowly, sprinkling several times with powdered sugar, and turning until it is dried enough. Pack in jars or boxes with sugar between the layers. -Mrs. I. N. Beem, Bourbon Co., Ky.
This is a candied-fruit method rather than a jar preserve: fruit is softened in water, saturated with syrup, then dried and packed in sugar. The original gives no quantities, so the proportions below are the conventional ones.
- Which citronIn Southern cookbooks of this era "citron" in the preserve chapter usually means the citron melon, or preserving melon, a hard white-fleshed relative of the watermelon grown specifically for candying. The rind of the citrus citron works the same way and is what you are more likely to find now; either is peeled, seeded and cut into strips or cubes about half an inch thick.
- The hinge: cook it soft before it meets sugarFruit must be fully tender in plain water first, because sugar sets the texture. Once it goes into syrup it will not soften further, and underdone citron stays leathery no matter how long you boil it afterward.
- "A nice syrup"Equal weights sugar and water is the usual starting point, enough to cover the fruit generously — roughly a pound of sugar and two cups of water per pound of drained fruit. Some cooks step the sugar up over two or three days rather than all at once, which gives a less shrunken result.
- How long in the syrup"Until the sugar has penetrated it" means the pieces turn translucent and no longer look chalky at the centre, typically 45 minutes to an hour and a half of gentle simmering. The syrup will thicken noticeably as water leaves the fruit.
- Drying without a warm kitchenAir-drying on dishes takes a day or two in dry weather and can go mouldy in humid weather. An oven at its lowest setting with the door ajar, or a dehydrator at 135-140F, does the same job in four to eight hours; the pieces should be tacky, not wet.
- StorageSugar-packed candied fruit keeps for months in an airtight tin at cool room temperature, and the layers of sugar are there to stop pieces from fusing and to absorb any residual moisture. Refrigeration can make it weep; freezing is better for long keeping.
- Yield and useIt is intended for fruitcake, mincemeat and holiday baking rather than for eating by the spoonful.
Preserved citron is one of the reasons nineteenth-century Southern gardens grew a melon nobody ate fresh: the citron melon is bland and firm to the point of being inedible raw, but that same dense flesh takes up syrup without collapsing, which is exactly what a fruitcake needs. Candying was the practical answer to a summer glut in a household with no refrigeration and a Christmas baking season to provision for. The Dixie Cook-Book credits its preserves to named contributors — here a Mrs. I. N. Beem of Bourbon County, Kentucky — which is why the instructions read as one experienced cook talking to another, with proportions left to judgment. The confusion between the citron melon and the citrus fruit of the same name is old and unresolved; both were candied, both went into the same cakes, and recipes of the period rarely bother to say which is meant.