No. 3659

Candied Violets

Violettes Pralinees

Select a pound of full-bloom violets; suppress the stalks and throw into cold water to refresh, then spread them on a towel to drain. Cook a pound and a quarter of sugar to "small ball" (No. 171), throw in the violets, remove the pan from the fire at once and stir gently to submerge them. Boil this up once and then transfer immediately to a vessel. The following day drain them on a sieve, pour the syrup back into a copper pan, add a little more sugar, and cook again to "small ball;" put in the flowers and transfer once more to the vessel to leave for another twelve hours; after this drain off again, pour this syrup back into the pan, boil it once or twice and add the violets, removing the pan at once from the fire. Stir the violets lightly in this syrup until it begins to grain, then pour the whole on sheets of paper; shake and separate the flowers carefully with the hands, and when dry pick them from the granulated sugar, arrange on a grate and leave to get cold.

PRESERVES (Conserves).

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's method is a three-day sugar infusion, not a quick candying, and every stage hinges on the same syrup temperature. Nothing here is difficult, but the quantities are professional-scale.

"Small ball"Ranhofer's small-ball stage is roughly 235-240F on a candy thermometer, the same point used for fondant and soft caramels. The first two cookings are taken to small ball; the third time the syrup is only boiled up once or twice before the flowers go back in.
Scale it downA pound of loose violet blossoms is a startling volume of flowers, appropriate to a hotel confectionery. The proportions reduce cleanly: 5 parts sugar by weight to 4 parts flowers, so 4 oz of violets to 5 oz of sugar makes a manageable batch.
Which violetThe flower intended is sweet violet, Viola odorata, the scented species used in confectionery; other members of the Viola genus, such as pansies and Johnny-jump-ups, are also edible. African violet (Saintpaulia) is an unrelated houseplant and is not used in food. Use blossoms grown without pesticides; florist flowers are not food-grade.
Off the heat, at onceThe instruction to remove the pan from the fire the moment the flowers go in is central to the method, though the recipe does boil the syrup up once with the violets in before it is poured off. The point is to let hot syrup penetrate the flowers slowly as they stand in it, twice for twelve hours or so, rather than cooking them in boiling syrup.
The graining stageOn the third pass the syrup is stirred until it "begins to grain", crystallizing into a dry crust that clings to each petal. Stir with a spatula against the side of the pan and watch for the gloss to turn cloudy; too early and the flowers stay sticky, too late and the mass seizes into a solid block.
The copper panUnlined copper conducts evenly and was standard for sugar work. Any heavy stainless or copper-core pan does the same job.
"Suppress the stalks"Pinch off stems and the green calyx behind each blossom; both are bitter and stay tough through the syrup. "Refresh" in cold water means a brief plunge to revive wilted flowers, after which they must be thoroughly dry or the syrup will thin.
Drying and keepingSpread on parchment, then finish on a rack in a warm dry place, or an oven at its lowest setting with the door ajar, until the coating is hard and no longer tacky. Stored airtight away from damp they keep for months; humidity turns them sticky.
Yield and useReduced as above, the batch fills a small jar and dresses several cakes. Ranhofer files them among candies and bonbons, though they are most often met as decoration and petit-four sweets, and the reserved granulated sugar left behind on the paper is worth keeping for flavouring creams.

A Little History

Candied violets belong to a European confectionery tradition generally traced to the flower-growing districts around Toulouse and Nice, where sweet violets were cultivated for both perfumery and sugar work through the nineteenth century; Toulouse still trades on the association. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, included them in The Epicurean (1894) among the candies and bonbons a great restaurant was expected to make in house, for finishing ices, petits fours and cakes. The three-day, three-boil schedule suits the way such work could be organised in a professional kitchen: each stage takes minutes of attention, and the flowers sit in syrup overnight while the confectioner does other things. Flower cookery of this kind was already old by Ranhofer's day — preserved and sugared violets appear in English and French receipt books well back into the seventeenth century — and it survives now mainly as a garnish.