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Candied Lemon Peels
Procure twenty-four sound, good-sized, very fresh lemons, cut in halves and scoop out interiors, keeping nothing but the perfect rinds. Place in cold water for two days, drain on a sieve, plunge in boiling water for five minutes and drain well again, place in a copper basin with three pounds granulated sugar, two quarts cold water, lightly mix and let come to a brisk boil. Shift pan to corner of range, let slowly simmer for two hours, remove, let slightly cool off. Transfer into a stone jar, tightly cork, place in a closet and use as desired.
This is candied peel in the old confectioner's sense: whole lemon shells simmered slowly in syrup and then stored in that syrup rather than dried. A few points of translation make it workable on a modern range.
- Scale it downTwenty-four lemons yields forty-eight half-shells, enough for a professional pastry station. A quarter batch — six lemons, 12 oz sugar, 1 pint water — behaves identically and fits an ordinary pan.
- The copper basinConfectioners used unlined copper for its even heat, but a long simmer in acidic sugar syrup leaches copper from bare metal. Use stainless steel or a lined preserving pan.
- The two-day soak is the hingeCold water draws out the bitterness in the white pith; without it the peel stays harsh. Change the water two or three times a day, and keep it in the refrigerator rather than on the counter.
- "Corner of the range"On a coal range this meant the coolest spot: a bare simmer with barely a bubble. On a modern burner that is the lowest setting, ideally with a heat diffuser. The recipe brings the pan to a brisk boil only briefly before shifting it; a boil held for the full two hours would reduce the syrup heavily and risk scorching the peel.
- Scooping the shellsHalve the lemons across the equator and work the flesh out with a grapefruit spoon, leaving the rind unbroken. Juice the scooped pulp and keep it; the recipe wastes it entirely.
- Storage"Tightly cork" a stone jar meant a syrup-packed preserve kept somewhere cool; the recipe specifies only a closet. The syrup may not be concentrated enough to be reliably shelf-stable at room temperature, so refrigerate it and use within a month or so.
- If you want dry candied peelLift the shells from the syrup, drain on a rack for several hours, then toss in granulated sugar and leave to dry until tacky rather than wet. Cut into strips before drying if they are destined for cake or panettone.
Candying citrus peel is one of the oldest sugar techniques in European cookery, arriving with sugar itself from the Arab confectionery tradition and appearing in English and Italian household books from the sixteenth century onward, when preserved peel was both a sweetmeat and a way of keeping an expensive imported fruit useful long after its flesh was gone. The instruction to keep only "the perfect rinds" and store them whole in syrup suggests a kitchen that valued an intact shell, though the book does not say what it was for. The long cold soak followed by a short blanch and a slow simmer is the classic sequence — soften the rind, then let sugar move in gradually so the peel turns translucent instead of tough. The copper basin is a period marker too, and it is the piece of equipment a modern cook should quietly replace.