It can be done! Onion Candy!

I didn’t believe it possible, but you can make candy containing onions. It is candy with a specific purpose, to be sure, but still qualifies, does it not?  According to the author of the book that has given us some fun over quite a few posts, Candy-making revolutionized; confectionery from vegetables (1912,)  onion candy is a useful medicine for colds, and a nice confectionary for onion-lovers.

Onion Cold Tablets.

By supplying a more wholesome sort of confectionery, vegetable candy – at least in the eyes of its friends! - has decreased the need of household remedies for indigestion and similar ailments. On the other hand, the newly discovered candy-making brings a definite contribution to the family medicine chest. From onion can be made tablets that have the virtues assigned to our foremothers' cough syrups and even are good to eat, according to those who like the flavor of the onion.

Onion cold tablets, then, are offered both as confectionery and as a household remedy. It should be borne in mind, however, that no household remedy, however good, or tried, takes the place of the physician. The family health is too precious a commodity to be entrusted to unprofessional hands.

To make the tablets, cut into thin slices two ounces of raw onion - about half of a good sized onion, - work the onion into two cupsful of sugar and let the mixture stand for two hours. Add two-thirds of a cupful of cold water, place the mass on the fire, and let it come just to a boil. Strain the syrup so made into a granite saucepan, and add one teaspoonful of vinegar and the amount of red pepper that the point of a knife will hold. Place the mixture on the fire, and when the mass begins to boil, put a wooden cover over the pan. Continue the boiling for several minutes; thoroughly "steam down" the side of the pan. By "steaming down" the side of the pan is meant confining the steam which rises from cooking so that it will free the sides of the pan from the accumulation of the mass that is cooking.

Remove the cover, insert a thermometer, and cook the mass to three hundred and thirty-five degrees. Thereupon stir in one tablespoonful of butter, remove the mass from the fire, add one teaspoonful of salt, and baking soda the size of a large pea. Thoroughly mix the mass, and pour it between candy-bars on a well-oiled marble slab. As the confection sets, mark it off in squares, and be sure to run the knife under the whole sheet to free it from the marble. Unless the sheet is so freed from the marble it will be sure to stick so that it can be handled only with difficulty. When the mass is cooled, it will easily break into the

squares into which it has been marked. For preserving, pack the tablets in tin boxes.

For those who do not like so much red pepper, the quantity may be regulated to suit. The amount of onion used may also be increased or diminished as the taste of the candy-maker dictates.

Carrot Sweets from Sweet Carrots.

The idea of sugar from potatoes which I told you about yesterday intrigued me greatly. On a whim, I decided to look and see if carrots have ever been taken seriously as a source of sugar. I have not, to date, found any evidence of a carrot-sugar industry, but being determined to give you a sweet carrot story, I went back to Candy-making revolutionized; confectionery from vegetables (1912.) 

Carrots.

To the art of candy-making, the use of carrots has brought a harmless new color. Formerly the peculiar yellowish orange of the carrot candy was a shade that the confectioner, amateur or otherwise, could not hope to attain without the use of artificial substances.

The statement that carrots are valuable in candy-making for their color must not be thought to mean that the confections made from them are not very good to eat. Quite the contrary; carrot candies have a very pleasing flavor.

Carrot Rings.

To make them, peel medium sized carrots and let them stand several hours in cold water. Cut crosswise into slices about one-quarter of an inch thick and with a small round cutter or sharp

knife remove the center pith. Drop the rings into boiling water and cook until tender. After they have thoroughly drained, drop them into a syrup made by boiling one part of water and three parts of sugar to two hundred and twenty degrees. Boil until the rings become translucent,  probably about ten minutes. Dry on a wire rack, taking care that the rings do not touch.

The next day, heat the syrup to two hundred and twenty-five degrees and again dip the rings and dry as before. If desired, when they are dry, fill the centers with bonbon cream or marzipan. When this center has become firm, dip the candy into a syrup cooked to two hundred and twenty-eight degrees. Even if the centers are not filled, it is well to make this third dipping; the ther-

mometer should, however, register two hundred and thirty degrees instead of merely two hundred and twenty-eight.

And here is a completely different concept of Carrot Cake, from The Cook's Dictionary and House-keeper's Directory (1830) by Richard Dolby

Carrot Cake.

Take a dozen large and very red carrots; scrape and boil them in water with a little salt; when done, drain them, take out the hearts,and rub the rest through a bolting; put them in a stewpan, and dry them over the fire. Make a cream patissière, with about half a pint of milk; and when done mix it with the carrots; add a pinch of minced orange-flowers pralinée, three quarters of a pound of powder-sugar, four whole eggs; put in, one at a time, the yolks of six more, and a quarter of a pound of melted butter; mix all these ingredients together well; whip up the six whites to a froth, and stir them in by degrees. Butter a mould, and put some crumb of bread in it, in a minute or two, turn out all the bread, and three quarters of an hour before the cake is wanted, pour the preparation into the mould and bake it. Serve it hot.

Potato Sugar and Potato Candy.

I have no idea whether or not sugar is derived from potatoes on any commercial scale anywhere in the world in this modern era, but it was an intriguing idea in the early nineteenth century. Here is a brief description of the process from a book with the marvelously convoluted complete title of:

The Popular Encyclopedia: being a general dictionary of arts, sciences, literature, biography, history, and political economy, reprinted from the American edition of the 'Conversations lexicon' with dissertations on the rise and progress of literature by Sir D. K. Sandford, on the progress of science by Thomas Thomson, and on the progress of the fine arts, by Allan Cunningham (Glasgow, 1836)

The next useful product [after potato starch] derivable from the potato is sugar. The discovery by chemical analysis, that the potato, though far different in form, taste, and all external qualities, was perfectly similar in component parts to the different kinds of grain used for the food of the man, led naturally to inquiries, whether the products derived from these grains, by submitting them to different chemical operations, might not be procured also from this root. Complete success was the consequence. It was found, among other things, that a substance, possessing all the properties of sugar, though differing a little from that of the sugar cane, could be procured by a simple operation from the potato. Until lately, however, the discovery was considered only as a matter of curiosity, and was mentioned only among men of science. Experiments were tried, on an extensive scale, in the United States of America, to ascertain whether, in districts where the potato grows abundantly, this sugar might not be made advantageously both to the population of the district, and to the manufacturer himself. The potatoes were ground by a very ingenious and simple method, by exposing them through a box or hopper to the action of a wooden cylinder, having nailed upon it long strips of iron punched full of holes, to give them a rough grating surface. This cylinder was driven by a band of leather attached to the drum of a water-wheel. On filling the hopper with potatoes, and giving the grater the necessary motion, the potatoes were reduced with surprising rapidity to a fine pulp, from which, by the aid of a sieve and water, the starch, in great purity, was readily obtained. This apparatus ground 3500 bushels of potatoes without the least repair. The starch thus obtained was then dissolved completely in water, heated by steam let into it. A certain quantity of sulphuric acid, or vitriol, was then mixed with it, and heat being applied, the whole of the starch was converted into syrup. This was purified from the acid by adding quicklime, and then evaporated; when the result was an excellent sugar fit for all domestic purposes. A bushel of potatoes, weighing 60 lb., gives 8 lb. of pure dry starch; and from these 8 lb., 7 ½ lb. of sugar are obtained. This sugar ferments briskly, when made into beer, and yields a healthful and pleasant beverage. It will be of most use, however, for making sweetmeats, and may be used at table in place of honey, for which it is a good substitute. It has already become a great favourite with most persons who have become acquainted with it. Its taste is that of a delicious sweet, and as an article of diet it is probably more healthful, and less oppressive to the stomach, than an; other sweet substance in use. Potatoes are used extensively in the eastern part of Russia for making treacle, which is quite as sweet and good as that which we obtain from the tropics, but having less consistence.

There is more than one way to make sweet things with the potato of course. One can add sugar from other sources and make candy. I have previously given recipes for Tomato Marshmallows and Potato Fondant from a book called Candy-making revolutionized; confectionery from vegetables, written in 1912 by Mary Elizabeth Hall, but it has other potato sweets too.

 

Potato Caramel No. 1.

Stir well one pound of sugar, one cupful of milk, one cupful of Irish potato — boiled and sifted as directed before — two tablespoonfuls of butter and one-half teaspoonful of salt. Boil until thick, and thin with one-half cupful of milk, and again cook until thick; again thin with one-half cupful of milk and cook until the mass is of caramel consistency, tested in cold water. Stir as little as possible, but be careful that the mass does not stick to the bottom of the kettle. Pour on a well-oiled marble between candy bars. Dry two days, cut in strips and dry again before finally cutting in squares. Place them in a cold place for several hours and then wrap them in parchment paper. They keep well.

This is the kind of potato caramel that is especially good for chocolate coating, although all of the potato caramels can be chocolate coated. Make the caramels as above and allow them to dry in the open air for several hours and then cover with chocolate.

The process is fully as laborious as it sounds, but the results are more than worth the trouble. The repeated cookings give the characteristic caramel taste and color. 

And from another source:

Potato Cocoanut Candy

1 medium sized potato

2 cups shredded cocoanut

2 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

Chocolate

Cook potato in boiling water until soft, and force through a coarse sieve or a potato ricer. There should be half a cup of potato. To this add sugar, cocoanut, and vanilla, working together until well mixed. Press one inch thick into small bread pan, and spread top with a thin layer of melted bitter chocolate or sweet chocolate. When chocolate is firm, cut in small squares.

This can be varied by using nuts or fruits instead of cocoanut.

The Candy Cook Book (1918) by Alice Bradley

The Goldsmiths’ Feast.

On Sunday it will be Saint Dunstan’s Feast Day, and therefore day when the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths used to hold their annual elections and feast, Dunstan being their patron saint.

In the year 1444, it seems from their account books that the goldsmiths must have had a fine old time with plenty of music and wine and a nice clean hall for their feast.

	₤	s	d
To minstrels	1	6	8
Their hoods and dinner	0	12	8
18 lb of spices	1	1	0
200 pepyns [pippins]	0	1	8
400 blanderett	0	3	8
16 gallons of wine	0	18	8
Bread	0	9	4
Ale	0	9	8
1 hogshead of wine	1	16	4
Keeping of the cupboard	0	0	8
Hire of earthen pots	0	0	4
3 pikes and a jowl of fresh salmon	0	7	8
5 lampreys and 2 green [fresh] fishes	1	10	8
7 crabbys [crabs]	0	0	7
10 roches	0	0	6
Bread	0	0	6
1potel wine, to the cooke	0	0	5
1 quartr coles [coals]	0	0	7
Washing of napery	0	0	7
For white cupps	0	0	9
For making clean the hall	0	0	2

This all-fish meal was presumably held on a ‘fast” day. The account does rather seem incomplete – there is not much food for the quantity of wine and other beverages, and of spices? On the other hand, I don’t know what “blanderett” are, and neither does the Oxford English Dictionary. The nearest word I can find is blaundrell (“a kind of white apple formerly very much in repute” – but with the pippins, it would have been a real apple feast, which does not seem likely. Any ideas?

From The Forme of Cury, the manuscript cookery book of the Master Chefs of King Richard II, compiled around the year 1390, I give you a nice dish of salmon in an almond milk broth with leeks and saffron.  

Cawdel of Saumon.

Take the guttes of Samoun and make hem clene. perboile hem a lytell. take hem up and dyce hem. slyt the white of Lekes and kerue hem smale. cole the broth and do the lekes therinne with oile and lat it boile togyd yfere . do the Samoun icorne therin, make a lyour of Almaundes mylke & of brede & cast therto spices, safroun and salt, seethe it wel. and loke that it be not stondyng [stiff, or thick.]

Extreme Kitchen DIY: Dripping.

Many, many stories here over the years have included a mention of “dripping” and it is an important ingredient in many of the recipes on the blog. It can be used to make any number of delicious things, including margarine and Dripping Pudding, and should you want or need to, you can even preserve it for long keeping (as on a voyage, for example.)

Dripping is a very versatile, if old-fashioned and not nutritionally-PC, ingredient in the kitchen, but as with so many things, simple is best. Some of you will remember the simple joy of bread and dripping, especially if you scored the crunchy bits on the bottom of the bowl. The best dripping of course does not have crunchy bits at the bottom, it is pure, clean fat. And for that, one needs to know how to clarify it. And for instructions on that, one needs to go to a book of Hard-Time Cookery. Luckily for us, a book with just that title was published in Britain in 1940 by the Association of Teachers of Domestic Subjects.

Clarified Dripping

Put the dripping into a saucepan with enough cold water to cover it, Bring gradually up to the boil, removing any scum as it arises. Strain into a bowl and put aside to get cold. The fat will set on the top of the water. Take it off, scrape the bottom. Put the fat into a saucepan and heat it gently until all the water in it has evaporated. If water is left in the fat it will not keep. Dripping beaten up to a soft creamy consistency is excellent for making cakes, pastry, etc.

Clarified Fat.

Cut the fat into small pieces. Put into a saucepan, cover with cold water and bring to the boil. Skim well. Boil until nearly all the water has evaporated. Reduce the heat and stir occasionally to prevent the fat from sticking. When the pieces look dried up and sink to the bottom of the melted fat, remove the pan from the fire. Cool slightly and strain through a fine strainer.

Things to do with Fresh Coconut.

Yesterday’s post got me thinking about coconut, and how we are both helped and cheated by the easy availability of packaged desiccated coconut. I have no doubt that for convenience and availability the trade-off is flavour and texture.  If only I had a bulk supply of coconuts and a kitchen slave to remove and grate the flesh I would never again purchase a packet of the too-sweet usually too-dry flakes and would make the following three recipes in a flash:

From The Nabob's Cookery Book, Indian Recipes, by P.O.P. (1870):

Cocoa Nut Pudding.

Procure an exceedingly fresh cocoa nut, and after removing the dark rind, grate it very finely. Chop up an ounce of candied citron very small, and grate the rind of half a lemon; put these ingredients into a basin, adding to them a quarter of a pound of sifted white sugar; oil over the fire two ounces of fresh butter, and pour it over the other ingredients; mix well, and put to them the yolks of three or four eggs ; add a squeeze of lemon, and pour into a tart dish lined with paste, and bake in a slow oven.

Cocoa Nut Cakes.

Grate a fresh cocoa nut, and leave it to dry; add to it a few sweet almonds and one bitter almond, also grated, two or three ounces of sifted white sugar, and sufficient well-beaten white of egg to make the whole into a stiff paste; roll it into round balls, and bake on a greased tin until they are quite dry, and the top of them slightly browned. Then put them off on to a cold dish.

Cocoa Nut Biscuits.

Three quarters of a pound of grated cocoa nut, the same quantity of pounded loaf sugar, and one teaspoonful of arrow root. Mix with one egg, and bake on buttered papers.

I am sure that I would not make the following recipe, although it might be pretty good made with chicken instead of the oysters:

Curried Oysters.

Let a hundred of large sea oysters be opened into a basin, without losing one drop of their liquor. Put a lump of fresh butter into a good sized saucepan, and, when it boils, add a large onion, cut it into thin slices, and let it fry in the uncovered stew-pan until it is of a rich brown; now add a bit more butter, and two or three tablespoonfuls of currie-powder. When these ingredients are well mixed over the fire with a wooden spoon, add gradually either hot water, or broth from the stockpot, cover the stewpan, and let the whole boil up.

Meanwhile, have ready the meat of a cocoa-nut, grated or rasped fine, put this into the stewpan with a few sour tamarinds (if they are to be obtained, if not, a sour apple, chopped). Let the whole simmer over the fire until the apple is dissolved, and the cocoa-nut very tender; then add a strong thickening made of flour, and water, and sufficient salt, as a currie will not bear being salted at table. Let this boil up for five minutes. Have ready also a vegetable marrow, or part of one, cut into bits, and sufficiently boiled to require little or no further cooking. Put this in with a tomata or two; either of these vegetables may be omitted. Now put into the stewpan the oysters, with their own liquor, and the milk of the cocoa-nut, if it be perfectly sweet; stir them well with the former ingredients: boil the carrier, stew gently for a few minutes, then throw in the strained juice of half a lemon. Stir the currie from time to time with a wooden spoon, and, as soon as the oysters are done enough, serve it up, with a corresponding dish of rice on the opposite side of the table. This dish is considered at Madras the 'ne plus ultra of Indian cookery.'

The edible mollusks of Great Britain and Ireland, with recipes for cooking them (1867)

by M.S. Lovell.

These are another definite:

Cocoanut Cheesecakes.

Pare off the rind from a fresh cocoanut, grate the white part, and put it into a perfectly clean saucepan with its weight in sifted sugar and the milk, or, if this is not quite sweet [?], two or three spoonfuls of water. Let this simmer, stirring it gently until tender. When the mixture is cool, add the yolks of two eggs welt beaten and a spoonful of orange-flower water. Line some patty-pans with good puff paste, and put a little mixture into each; bake in a good oven. Sift a little sugar over the cheese-cakes before baking them.

Morning Bulletin (Rockhampton, Qld.) September 12, 1887.

Coconut Bacon.

For bacon lovers and coconut lovers: I give you this:

Coconut bacon.

For this breakfast dish fry some bacon and keep hot. Beat thoroughly one or two eggs, and allow to each egg one small tablespoon flour, 2 small tablespoons coconut, 3 tablespoons milk, a little pepper and salt. Mix well, and fry in bacon fat till brown. Cut into pieces pile on bacon, and serve hot.

The Courier-Mail (Brisbane, Qld.) September 6, 1950

Who’d have thought it? An interesting combination, Yes? I love coconut and I love bacon, and I may well try this.

If your tastes in coconut are rather more conservative, here are a few other recipes from Australian newspapers of the past:

Cocoanut Pie.

Two rich, somewhat extravagant, but delicious cocoanut pies can be made by following these directions: Grate one pint of fresh cocoanut quite fine; beat one quarter of a pound of butter and one of sugar to a cream-like froth; add a tumbler (of ordinary size) full of wine, strongly flavoured with rose water; stir in the cocoanut, and, lastly, put in the whites of five eggs beaten to a froth. Those pies should be baked in deep plates, with a thin lower crust.

The North Eastern Ensign (Victoria) March 2, 1883.

Cocoanut Pie.

Ingredients: One pint of milk, four ounces of desiccated cocoanut, sugar, two eggs, a lemon, a little butter, puff pastry. Method: Boil this milk, shake in the cocoanut and stir it well, let it boil for ten minutes. Pour it into a basin to cool, add the sugar, butter a grating of lemon-peel and a little of the juice, beat up the yolks of the eggs and add them. Line a pie-dish with puff pastry, put in the mixture and bake in a good oven for nearly an hour, whisk the whites of the eggs to a stiff froth and add a little sugar. Put them over the top of the pie and let it just get slightly brown. Serve quickly.

Gippsland Times (Victoria) April 1, 1915

Coconut Bread Pudding

One cup breadcrumbs, 1 cup coconut, 1 pint milk, 2 eggs, 2 tablespoons sugar, 1 tablespoon butter, pinch salt, nutmeg, vanilla essence.

Soak the crumbs and coconut in the milk for 15 minutes. Add the beaten eggs, sugar, melted butter, and essence.

Pour into a well-greased pie-dish. Sprinkle with nutmeg. Bake in a moderate oven till the custard is set. Serve either hot or cold.

Australian Women’s Weekly, April 20, 1935