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Preserved Orange Peel
Mrs. A. N. Arnold.
Peel the oranges and cut the rinds into narrow shreds, boil till tender, change the water three times, squeeze the juice of the orange over the sugar; put pound to pound of sugar and peel; boil twenty minutes all together.
A short, workable formula for wet-candied orange peel. The one thing it does not spell out is how much water-changing matters, and that is the difference between a sweetmeat and something inedibly bitter.
- The three changes of waterBitterness lives in the white pith and the oils of the flavedo, and each fresh boil draws more of it out. Bring to a boil, drain, cover with cold water again, and repeat; skipping this to save time is the usual reason homemade peel tastes harsh.
- "Boil till tender"Reckon on 30 to 45 minutes of total simmering across the three waters. The shreds should be soft enough to cut with a thumbnail before any sugar goes near them, since sugar sets the texture and peel that goes in tough stays tough.
- Pound to poundMatch the peel with an equal weight of sugar; the recipe does not say whether to weigh before or after boiling, and weighing the drained, boiled peel is the safer reading. Four or five large oranges give somewhere in the region of half a pound of peel, to be matched with the same weight of sugar (roughly 1 to 1 1/8 cups).
- Juice over the sugarThe juice mainly serves to wet the sugar into a syrup. If your oranges are dry, add water to make about 1/2 cup of liquid per pound of sugar, or the mixture will scorch before it ever boils.
- The twenty minutesTwenty minutes of steady boiling should thicken the syrup enough to cling to the shreds; judge it by thickness rather than by the clock. Watch the last few minutes, as an over-boiled syrup will grain and the peel will turn hard and sugary.
- Keeping itThis is a wet preserve, not a shelf-stable canned one. Pack it warm into clean jars with its syrup and refrigerate, where it will hold for a month or two, or drain the shreds, toss them in granulated sugar, and dry them on a rack overnight.
- YieldFour to five oranges give a small jar's worth of finished peel with its syrup, enough for a cake, a batch of mince, or a gift.
- Choose the fruitThick-skinned navel or Seville oranges shred and candy better than thin-skinned juicing varieties. Scrub unwaxed fruit, or wash waxed fruit in hot water first, since the peel is the whole dish.
Candying citrus peel is one of the oldest uses of sugar in European cookery, predating the fruit's arrival as a cheap winter commodity by centuries. In the second half of the nineteenth century oranges travelled north by rail in winter, and the peel of a fruit eaten fresh was too good to throw out, so the recipe belongs to the household economy that runs through these books. Notice that it carries a contributor's name, Mrs. A. N. Arnold, and the terseness is the tone of a woman writing for other cooks who already knew what boiled sugar looked like. Preserved peel of this kind was kept for fruitcakes, puddings and mincemeat, where it did the work that candied lemon and citron did in older English receipts.