The encyclopædia of practical cookery

CANDIED PEEL. — There are three kinds of Candied Peel used by cooks and confectioners to flavour cakes, puddings, and other sweet dishes. These are lemon, orange, and citron, or cedrat. The mode of preparation adopted for the wholesale market is very simple. The pulp is removed from the thick rinds of very soimd young fruit, which have been cut into halves ; the rinds are then boiled in water until they are soft, and afterwards suspended in a strong candy syrup (cold) until they become partially transparent. The next step is to dry them either in a current of warm air or a drying-stove, at 120deg. Fahr. The same principle and process is adopted by artistic confectioners for preparing some very tasty little baskets and cups for holding fruit, cream, ices, jellies, and other confections. The following receipts depend upon the Candied Peel for their quality : Candied-Peel Pudding. —(1) Thinly slice an equal quantity of citron-, orange-, and lemon-peel. Butter a pie-dish, line it with puff paste, and put in the sliced peels. Beat the yolks of seven and the whites of two eggs with 6 table-spoonfuls of caster sugar, then pour it over the peels. Put the pudding into a brisk oven, and bake for a little more than half-an-hour. Serve either hot or cold. (2) Put lloz. of butter over the fire in a brass saucepan, and when it is quite hot mix with it eight eggs beaten well with lloz. of powdered white sugar; keep stirring it for seven or eight minutes, put it into a dish, and let it stand all night. The next day mix with it Jib. of candied orange-peel, lemonpeel, and citron, and 1 wineglassful of orange-flower water. Butter a pudding-dish, lay a sheet of buttered white paper at the bottom of it, put the voldron on to it, and bake for twenty minutes. Turn it out of the dish it was baked in, and serve in a silver or glass dish, garnished with pieces of candied orange-peel and citron. CANDY.— The origin of this term is evidently from the Latin Candidas, glittering white (candied sugar having that characteristic), or again it may have originated from Khand, the Sanscrit for the sugar cane. However that may be, there is only one accepted definition of the word in cookery, and that is “ boiled sugar with more or less flavouring.” The process of making Candy must not be confounded, although it often is, with crystallising sugar. For further information on this subject see Sugarboiling. Candied Fruit or Nuts. — Boil 1 lb. of loaf sugar in 1 breakfast-cupful of water to the crack (see Sugar-boiling). The syrup must never be stirred, and must boil quickly, not furiously. Take the prepared fruit or nuts on the point of a large needle or fine skewer, dip them into the syrup, and then lay them on a dish that has been lightly buttered or oiled ; or string them on a thread, and after dipping in the syrup suspend them by the thread. When oranges are used, For details respecting Culinary Processes, Utensils, Sauces, &c., referred to, see under their special heads. Candy — continued. divide them into sections, and dry them on a sieve, or in a warm room, or in the open air. Cherries should be stoned. Walnuts are especially nice prepared in this way.