No. 3658

Trocaderos with Rum

Trocaderos au Rhum

Cook a pound and a half of sugar to "small crack" (No. 171), adding three gills of cream, and let it boil up once only; put in half a gill of rum and cast it at once in starch imprinted with small lozenge-shaped molds; set the box away in the heater for twelve hours. Now remove the candies one by one from the starch, brush carefully and range them on a grate; dip the candies in a light royal icing (No. 101) well flavored with rum.

← No. 3657 Trocaderos with Raspberry Candies & Bonbons No. 3659 Candied Violets →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a starch-mogul cordial candy: a hot cream fondant cast into impressions pressed in dried starch, left to set into a firm shell with a soft centre, then iced. The whole thing hinges on the starch bed being bone dry and warm.

"Small crack"The small crack stage (petit cassé) is generally reckoned at roughly 275-285F. Use a thermometer; at that stage a drop in cold water snaps but is not yet brittle enough to shatter.
GillsA gill is half a cup. Three gills of cream is 1 1/2 cups, and half a gill of rum is 1/4 cup, against 1 1/2 lb sugar.
"Boil up once only"The cold cream drops the syrup well below crack stage and the single return to the boil is all that is wanted. Prolonged boiling after the cream goes in will curdle it and drive the mass toward caramel.
When the rum goes inAt the last moment, immediately before casting, since alcohol and rum aroma are driven off quickly in a syrup that hot. The recipe also calls for the icing to be flavoured with rum.
The starch bedFill a shallow box with cornstarch dried in a low oven and cooled, level it, and stamp the lozenge impressions with a plaster or wood mould. Any moisture in the starch and the candies will weep and never form a shell.
"The heater"A warm, draught-free cupboard or plate warmer. Twelve hours of gentle warmth lets sugar crystallise against the starch into a thin crust while the centre stays soft. A modern oven with only the light on, or a proofing setting, does the same job.
Cleaning and icingLift the pieces out with a fork or slotted scoop, brush every trace of starch away with a soft brush, then dip in royal icing thinned to a coating consistency and dry on a rack. Trapped starch shows as grey patches under the icing.
Royal icing and raw whitesNo. 101 is egg white beaten with powdered sugar and is never cooked. Use pasteurised whites or meringue powder if serving to anyone who should avoid raw egg.
YieldDepends entirely on the size of the mould. They keep a week or two in a tin; the centres gradually firm as the shell thickens.

A Little History

The name points to the Palais du Trocad dero, built for the Paris Exposition of 1878 and for a generation a byword for Parisian display; the name was attached to a number of confections, and Charles Ranhofer, French-trained and chef at Delmonico's in New York, carried the vocabulary into The Epicurean (1894). The method matters more than the name: casting soft fondants and liqueur cordials into impressions pressed in dried starch spread through nineteenth-century confectionery and let a shop turn out large numbers of identical shelled sweets without hand-dipping each centre. Ranhofer's neighbouring numbers, Trocaderos with raspberry and candied violets, show related sweets grouped together in the book.