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French Candies
Equal parts of water and white of egg, mix in confection sugar until the consistency of nice soft cookies; roll in small balls and set away to harden. Have a chocolate cream hot, dip little cream balls, in with a long hat pin and place on an oiled paper to dry.
This is an uncooked fondant — raw egg white bound with powdered sugar, shaped, and enrobed in warm chocolate. The centre is never heated at any stage, which is the problem.
- Raw egg white, never cookedThe white goes into the sugar raw and stays raw. Dipping the finished ball in warm chocolate coats the outside but does not bring the interior anywhere near a temperature that would kill Salmonella; even a "hot" chocolate coating is applied too briefly, and at too low a temperature, to heat the centre. The chocolate shell then seals the centre in. Use a current recipe for chocolate-dipped fondant, one built on cooked sugar syrup or pasteurised egg white.
- Sugar is not a preservative hereA cooked fondant reaches 234-240F, which drives off water and heats the whole mass. This version relies on powdered sugar alone to stiffen a raw liquid, so nothing in the process treats the egg white.
- Confection sugarNineteenth-century confectioners' or powdered sugar, the same product sold today as icing sugar or 10X. Period versions were sometimes ground without cornstarch, so they absorbed liquid differently from the modern boxed kind.
- Chocolate cream, hotThe phrase is vague. It most likely means a melted chocolate coating rather than a ganache.
- The hat pinThe recipe uses a long hat pin as an improvised dipping tool, piercing the ball so it can be lowered into the chocolate; it leaves a small hole in the shell.