No. 3625

Malaga Raisins Stuffed and Glazed

Raisins de Malaga Farcis et Glaces

Split some fine Malaga raisins in two without separating the parts; remove the seeds and stuff one-third with a half-inch ball of almond paste (No. 125) colored white, another third with the same paste colored pink and the remaining third of almond paste with pistachios (No. 128); all these pastes to be prepared with cooked sugar (No. 3616); roll them into olive shapes, leaving the almond or pistachio paste show through the opening, and lay them at once on a wire sieve, then place in the heater to let get dry and glaze with sugar cooked to "crack" (No. 171).

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For the Modern Kitchen

A dipped confection from Ranhofer's confectionery chapter, built on three cross-references the modern cook has to supply. The hinge is the sugar: it must reach the hard-crack stage and be used quickly, because a syrup below that point will stay tacky and the raisins will weep.

Malaga raisinsThese are large seeded muscat raisins, still sold as muscatel raisins or Malaga raisins in Spanish and Middle Eastern groceries. Ordinary seedless raisins are far too small to split and stuff; look for fruit at least an inch long, and soak briefly in warm water if they have dried hard.
"Cooked sugar" pastesThe recipe sends the reader to No. 3616 for the cooked sugar with which all three pastes are to be prepared; the degree it is boiled to is not stated here. Good-quality commercial marzipan of about 1:1 almond to sugar behaves much the same; knead in a little sifted confectioners' sugar if it is too soft to roll.
Pistachio pasteNo. 128 supplies the pistachios for the green third; its composition is not given on this page. A modern pistachio paste works, though most are looser than Ranhofer's; stiffen with almond paste rather than more sugar.
ColouringCochineal was the usual pink of nineteenth-century confectionery; the recipe asks for one third coloured white and one third pink. Any gel or paste colouring will do; avoid water-based liquid colours, which slacken the paste.
"The heater"A warming closet or plate-warming cupboard; no temperature is given. An oven with only the light on, or a dehydrator on its lowest setting, dries the surface skin in an hour or two. The point is to dry them, not to warm the paste until it slumps.
Sugar cooked to "crack"No. 171 is the hard-crack stage, 300-310F (150-155C). Cook plain sugar with a little water and a pinch of cream of tartar or a spoonful of glucose to prevent graining, and stop the boil the moment it reaches temperature. Hold the pan over barely warm water while dipping so it does not set, and drop the syrup rather than stirring it once it is at temperature.
DippingSpear each raisin on a dipping fork or cocktail stick, submerge, lift, let the surplus drain, and set on an oiled marble slab or silicone mat. Work in small batches of a dozen; the glaze will be brittle and clear if the sugar is fresh and cloudy if it has been reheated more than once.
Keeping and yieldKeeping -- glazed sugar attracts moisture, so these are best eaten the day they are made and are not worth attempting in humid weather; stored in paper cases in a tin, they will stay crisp perhaps a day.

A Little History

Ranhofer wrote The Epicurean (1894) out of what is usually given as some thirty years, though not unbroken, as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and the confectionery chapter is essentially a professional pastry manual bolted onto a cookbook: it assumes a marble slab, a sugar-boiling range and a warming closet in the same room. Stuffed and glazed fruits belong to the family of French fruits deguises -- "disguised fruits" -- dates, prunes, walnuts and raisins filled with tinted marzipan and dipped in hard-crack sugar, served among the petits fours and bonbons at the end of a long dinner or piled on the dessert table at a ball. The three colours, white, pink and green, are the standard nineteenth-century pastry palette, the green from pistachio and the pink then usually from cochineal. Large seeded muscat raisins from Malaga, in Andalusia, were a prestige import in that era, sold in flat boxes on the stem for the Christmas table, and their size is much of the reason the dish works: they were large enough to split and fill by hand.