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Glacé Nuts and Fruits
1 pint Karo, Blue or Red Blanched nuts Label 1 cup granulated sugar Dried fruits-sections of oranges or Malaga grapes Combine the Karo and sugar and boil to 300 degrees F. until it becomes brittle when tested in cold water. It will take about thirty minutes. Place the pan over boiling water, quickly dip in the nut meats, using a fork or hat pin and place on pans lightly rubbed with Mazola, until firm. If desired, half of the glacé mixture may be mixed with one and one-half the quantity of chopped nut meats, any kind, and dropped by small teaspoonfuls onto oiled pans. In dipping sections of oranges be sure the skin is not broken, as the juice will run out and melt the glacé. Great care should be taken in preparing the grapes, not to tear the skins at the end when removing from the stem.
A hard-crack sugar syrup used as a dipping glaze for nuts and fresh fruit. The whole thing turns on the temperature and on the weather.
- Karo Blue and Red LabelTwo grades of the same corn syrup: Blue Label was the light, near-colourless syrup, Red Label the darker, stronger-flavoured one. For a clear glacé that shows the fruit, use light corn syrup; dark will work but tints and flavours the coating.
- MazolaCorn oil, then and now. Any neutral oil will do for greasing the pans, applied very sparingly — the recipe says lightly rubbed for a reason, as pooled oil makes the bottoms cloudy.
- 300F is the whole recipeHard crack. Use a candy thermometer and treat the thirty minutes as an estimate only; a wide pan reaches 300F much faster than a narrow one. The cold-water test confirms it: a drizzle should set into threads that snap rather than bend.
- The pan over boiling waterThis is to hold the syrup fluid while you dip, not to cook it further. Set the pan over the water without letting the base touch it, and keep the syrup from catching steam — a few drops of condensation will make the coating tacky.
- The hat pinA thin skewer, cocktail stick or proper dipping fork. Anything that punctures the fruit as little as possible; the warning about broken skins is the point of the recipe.
- Malaga grapesLarge, firm, thick-skinned white table grapes, sold on the stem in the period. Any firm seedless grape works, but pull each one so the stem end stays sealed, and dry the fruit completely — surface water dulls and softens the glaze.
- HumidityCorn syrup glacé is hygroscopic and will weep on a damp day, sometimes within a couple of hours. Make it in dry conditions, on the day it is to be eaten, and keep the pieces uncovered rather than boxed.
- The nut-cluster variationHalf the glacé mixture stirred with chopped nut meats (the original's 'one and one-half the quantity' is ambiguous) and dropped by small teaspoonfuls onto oiled pans. Work fast — that mixture stiffens well before a plain dipping syrup does.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. Sugar at 300F causes serious burns; keep a bowl of cold water beside the stove.
This appears to come from one of the corn-products promotional cookbooks that circulated widely in the early twentieth century, and the tell is in the ingredient list: Karo syrup and Mazola oil were both products of the Corn Products Refining Company, and a recipe naming both by brand was written to sell them. Glacé work had been a confectioner's line. What the corn-syrup makers offered was a way to do it at home: corn syrup interferes with crystallisation and so resists the graining that ruins a pure-sugar boil, and a home cook without a marble slab or a copper pan could get a clear, glassy coat on the first attempt. The instruction to dip orange sections whole, skin unbroken, points to the same audience, the fruit being looked at as much as eaten, the sort of thing one made to impress guests rather than to feed a family.