No. 3646

Drops

Pastilles

These are made by mixing powdered sugar from which the icing sugar has been removed by sifting through a very fine sieve, flavored either with aromatics or fruit juices, to the consistency of a paste. They are all prepared exactly alike; those composed of fruit should be a little more liquid and a little less heated than those with aromatically flavored waters. They should all be dropped on to bright tin plates.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer gives a method rather than a formula: there are no quantities here at all, and the entry assumes you have already read the surrounding numbers on candies and drops. The technique is simple once the two variables — how much liquid and how much heat — are understood.

The hinge: heat only to warmThe paste is warmed enough to flow, and Ranhofer's contrast between more and less heating implies it is never cooked. He gives no method; a bowl set over hot (not boiling) water, worked with a spatula until the paste ribbons off the spoon, is a reasonable modern reading. If the sugar takes on colour or begins to boil at the edges it will set hard and glassy instead of drying to the opaque, snappable pastille you want.
"Powdered sugar from which the icing sugar has been removed"Nineteenth-century confectioners sifted milled sugar into grades; the impalpable dust that passed the finest sieve was "icing sugar" and was set aside for glazes. What remains is a slightly coarser powder. Modern confectioners' sugar is all of that fine grade and carries 3 percent cornstarch, which dulls the finish; superfine caster sugar ground briefly in a spice mill and sifted comes closer.
Aromatics versus fruit"Aromatically flavored waters" means rose water, orange-flower water, or a drop of an essential oil such as peppermint or lemon. Fruit versions use strained juice, which brings acid; acid inverts sugar and slows crystallisation, so those pastes are kept wetter and cooler to compensate, exactly as the text says.
Proportions, since none are givenAs a modern working starting point, not Ranhofer's, a pound of sifted sugar takes on the order of 2 to 3 tablespoons of liquid. Add the liquid a teaspoon at a time, keeping in mind that the text calls for the fruit pastes to be the wetter of the two. The paste should hold a soft peak and level itself slowly, like thick royal icing.
"Bright tin plates"Unlined, polished sheet tin, which released the dried drops cleanly. Substitute parchment or a silicone mat on a flat baking sheet; a bare modern aluminium pan will stick and a warped one will give lopsided drops.
Dropping themUse a paper cone, a small squeeze bottle, or a warmed teaspoon, and aim for drops the size of a dime. Keep the bowl over its warm water while you work or the paste stiffens in the vessel long before you reach the end of it.
Drying and yieldLeave the drops uncovered at room temperature until the tops are firm and matte -- several hours, often overnight in humid weather. Yield depends wholly on how large you pipe them; a pound of sugar will give something on the order of a hundred dime-sized pastilles. Store them in an airtight tin; ambient moisture will soften them back into paste.

A Little History

Pastille comes from the Latin pastillus, a little loaf or cake, and the word reached confectionery by way of the apothecary: lozenges of sugar carrying peppermint, licorice, cachou or gum were sold as breath sweeteners and throat remedies long before they were sold as candy, and the line between the two trades stayed blurred through the nineteenth century. Ranhofer's placement is telling — this entry sits in The Epicurean (1894) among cordial candies and peppermint drops, in a chapter written for a professional confectionery department of the kind Delmonico's maintained, where flavoured waters, essential oils and fruit juices were all kept to hand and one base method could be turned out in a dozen versions. That is why the instructions are so bare: the reader was assumed to be a pastry cook who needed the ratio of heat to liquid explained, not the mixing of sugar.