SC - Pulled/blown sugar flowers/fruit

[Laura Bethard]

As it happens, I went to culinary school and graduated with a
degree in Pastry Arts.  I know how to make pulled and blown
sugar confections and would happily show anyone interested in
learning, provided you live withing some reasonable distance of
Carolingia (Boston).

Pulled sugar requres very cleanly refined sugar lest it
crystallize.  Usually one adds an invert sugar to keep it from
crystallizing.  You must also add an acid to the solution.  It 
requires a fairly high degree of finesse when adding acid to the
solution.  Too little acid and you will get seriosly burned
before you can handle it enough.  Too much acid and the
creations will not harden into those shiny brittle pieces we
admire.  

Once you have made your sugar solution and brought it to the
correct temperature, shock it in ice water to stop the cooking. 
Then pour onto a marble slab.  *Carefully* turn the cooling
edges into the center untilthe sugar is cool enough to pull. 
Stretch it into a rope, fold over on itself and stretch again. 
This adds air to it and will eventually result in the high shine
of the finished flowers/fruits/etc.

Too keep your sugar from crystallizing while you are working
with it:

Keep warming it slightly in the microwave whenever it gets tough
to pull.  Seven seconds usually does it

*do not* rework any cooled shards of sugar back into your warm
sugar.  It will crystallize three times as fast.  Throw away and
cooled shards.

Work with small amounts of sugar.  You can let the part of sugar
that is not in use cool, then slowly warm it in the microwave

> I'm not aware of any real reason to believe the process is a 
> period one, but on the other hand, there are various other 
> period boiled, kneaded and formed sugar recipes, I assume
> someone could conceivably have been doing this with some of
> the sugar used to make pynade, or perhaps that 15th-century 
> English boiled sugar plate.

To the best of my knowledge, pulled sugar and its ilk is just
slightly out of period for Europe.  The only sources I have on
the subject are "Sugarplums and Sherbet: a Prehistory of Sweets"
by Laura Mason and "A Closet for Ladies and Gentlewomen" printed
by John Havailand in 1636.  Mason maintains that pulled sugar
was probably brought to Europe by the Moslem expansion in the
seventeenth century.  "A Closet.." seems to contain only
information for making preserves and syrups, not boiled sweets,
although I confess I've only skimmed it so far.

I don't know of any evidence in period of blowing sugar, as that
is a very difficult technique requiring precise temperature,
control, but one could make a case for pulled sugar sweets
similar to candy canes, I imagine

Richenza

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"AHA!" she cried with accents wide and waved her wooden leg.

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