No. 3648

Strawberry Drops

Pastilles aux Fraises

Place seven ounces of powdered sugar, prepared as (No. 3646), in a small copper pan having a spout, and reduce it to the consistency of a paste with about an ounce of filtered strawberry juice; color lightly with liquid carmine to give it a pink hue. Stand the pan on the fire and heat until the paste flows, stirring continuously with a small spatula; however, it must be of a consistency not to spread when dropped on the trays. To dress, hold the pan in the left hand, inclining the spout toward the tray, and in the right hand hold a small wire; with this cut the paste away from the spout as fast as it runs out, thus leaving it fall in small pieces to form into drops three-eights of an inch in diameter and slightly apart from each other. Half an hour after they can be detached from the tray by bending it slightly and then shaking them; throw on a sieve to finish drying.

← No. 3647 Peppermint Drops Candies & Bonbons No. 3649 Filbert Candies →

For the Modern Kitchen

A sugar pastille dropped by hand from a spouted pan, in the confectioner's style of the 1890s. The whole thing turns on the consistency of the warm paste, so read that part twice before you heat anything.

The hinge: heat gently, brieflyThe paste needs only to become fluid enough to run from the spout, and no further. Push it harder and you risk a coarse, grainy set or a dulled pink.
QuantitiesSeven ounces of sugar is about 200 g; an ounce of strawberry juice is two tablespoons. That ratio is the target, but fruit juice varies in water content, so add the last of it drop by drop.
Filtered juice mattersCrush ripe berries and strain through muslin or a coffee filter until clear. Pulp and seeds make the paste sticky and stop the drops setting with a clean skin.
Liquid carmineCochineal-based carmine is still sold as a food color and is what gives the true period pink; note that it is insect-derived and not vegetarian. Any red food coloring works, used sparingly — the recipe asks for a hint, not a scarlet.
The copper pan and wireA small copper pan with a pouring lip was the confectioner's standard; a stainless saucepan with a good spout, or a metal measuring jug, does the job. The "small wire" is simply a length of stiff wire drawn across the spout to shear off each drop — a thin palette knife blade works, or pipe the drops from a small paper cone instead.
TraysThe recipe has you release the set drops by bending the tray, so it must be flexible sheet metal rather than a rigid slab. Use a smooth baking sheet, ungreased and unlined; parchment will work but the undersides stay damper and take longer to dry.
Drying and storageHalf an hour sets them enough to lift; a sieve or rack gives air to both sides and they want several hours, ideally overnight, in a dry room. Once firm they keep for weeks in a tin between layers of waxed paper, and turn sticky in any humidity.
YieldThe original gives none.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) was Charles Ranhofer's summing-up of some three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its candy chapter reads like a professional confectioner's notebook because that is essentially what it is — the pastry and confectionery departments of a great restaurant made their own bonbons for the table. Pastilles of this kind are usually traced to the apothecary's trade rather than the cook's: a pastille was long a small medicated lozenge of gum and sugar, and peppermint and fruit drops kept that dosed, drop-by-drop form long after the medicine went out of them. It explains the exacting note about consistency: a paste too thin spreads into a puddle, one too thick will not leave the spout at all.