No. 3640

Candying, Cold and Hot

Candi a Froid et a Chaud

Cold.—This manner of candying is specially adapted for bonbons. Put some lump sugar in a copper pan, pour over sufficient water to dissolve it, and as soon as this takes place set it on the fire to cook to thirty-five degrees; when the sugar has attained this degree take the pan from the fire and stand it in a basin or any other receptacle filled with cold water; cover the sugar with a round of paper, and leave stand till cold. Now pour it into the candy pans containing the pieces to be candied; put in a dry place in a moderate temperature and leave for twelve to eighteen hours; drain off the syrup and place the candied pieces on a grate to dry.

Hot.—This manner of candying is used specially for candying preserved fruits. Cook some syrup to thirty-six degrees; leave rest for one instant, then pour it into the candy pans, having the fruits already arranged therein; place the pan in a heater, having it moderately hot, and remove only after six or seven hours, or when the fruits are all coated.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Two finishing techniques from the confectioner's bench: a cold sugar bath that grows a fine crystal shell on bonbons, and a warm one that glazes preserved fruit. Almost everything hinges on reading the syrup correctly and then leaving it alone.

"Thirty-five degrees" is not a thermometer readingRanhofer means degrees Baume, measured with a syrup hydrometer floated in the cooled syrup, not degrees Fahrenheit or Celsius. 35 Be is roughly 65-67 Brix (specific gravity about 1.32); 36 Be is a shade heavier. A modern refractometer or a Brix hydrometer will do the same job.
If you have no hydrometerA syrup boiled to about 221-223F at sea level lands in this range, but density is what matters and evaporation varies with your pan. Measure the finished syrup rather than trusting the boil time.
Do not stir, and skimDo not stir -- The round of paper laid on the surface keeps a crust from forming as the syrup cools, and the pan of cold water brings it down quickly; both help stop stray crystals from seeding the batch. One grain of sugar dragged down the side of the pan can turn the batch cloudy and grainy instead of glassy.
The copper panUnlined copper was standard for sugar work because it conducts evenly; plain sugar syrup will not react with it. Stainless steel with a heavy base is a fine substitute. Avoid unlined copper if you are working with acidic fruit syrups.
Candy pans and the grateA candy pan is a shallow tray, usually fitted with a wire grid so the pieces sit off the bottom while the syrup covers them. Any shallow dish plus a small cooling rack works. The "grate" for draining is simply a wire rack, and the drained pieces need air on all sides.
The "heater", moderately hotPresumably an etuve, the confectioner's warming cupboard. The recipe gives no temperature beyond "moderately hot", so any figure is a guess: gentle warmth, well short of anything that would thin the syrup. A dehydrator or an oven at its lowest setting with the door cracked is the nearest modern equivalent.
Timing and the finishTwelve to eighteen hours cold, six to seven hours warm. The pieces are ready when a thin opaque crystal skin has formed over the whole surface; lift one and check rather than going by the clock, since humidity in the room changes everything.
Yield and keepingThe recipe gives no quantities because the syrup is made to fit the tray: enough to cover the pieces, with the sugar dissolved in the minimum water. Once dry, candied pieces keep for weeks in a tin in a dry place and go sticky in a damp one.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer wrote The Epicurean (1894) out of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry sits in the section on pieces montees and show pieces, where candied fruit was as much decoration as dessert. The degrees he calls for are Baume degrees, from the scale devised by the French chemist Antoine Baume in the eighteenth century, which remained the working language of professional confectionery long after thermometers were common; a French-trained chef would have reached for a pese-sirop without a second thought. The word candy itself is generally traced back through Old French and Arabic qandi to a Sanskrit term for crystallised cane sugar, which is precisely what this process makes: not a coating poured on, but a shell of sugar crystals grown slowly out of a saturated syrup onto whatever is suspended in it. Candied fruit on this pattern was a specialty of southern France, Apt in the Vaucluse above all, and it arrived in American grand-hotel kitchens with the French chefs who ran them.