[Sca-cooks] Candied violet recipe

[Harris Mark.S-rsve60]

Vicente asked:
Does anyone have a candied violet recipe?  I have a friend with access to a
lot of good violets, and she wants to make those hard, sugar-encrusted
violets that cost an arm and a leg in cake decorator catalogs.  SOme recipes
for violet syrup, jam or sugar would not be amiss, either.
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From:
candy-msg        (188K) 11/16/01    Period candy. Recipes. Candied fruit peels.
http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-SWEETS/candy-msg.html
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Sugar Candy

2 Cups Granulated Sugar
2 oz Rosewater
Rice Flour
Petals of roses, violets or carnations

Dust a marble stone or oiled cookie sheet with rice flour.  Mix sugar
and rosewater, adding two or three drops of food coloring if desired.
Bring to a boil.  If crystals form on the sides of the pan, brush down
with a pastry brush dipped in cold water.  Boil the mixture without
stirring to the hard-crack stage (300 degrees).   Immerse the pan in
cold water so that the mixture will not continue to cook.  Stir in
flower petals if desired, and pour onto prepared sheet or stone.  Wait
five minutes, then mark into lozenge shapes with a knife dipped in ice
water.  Leave another few minutes until hard, then remove from sheet or
stone and break into individual lozenges.

Magdalena
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I have just found another recipe for violets for the use in making 'marbled'
sugar plate in a book that I have been devouring (well not literally ;-)
Sugar Plums & Sherbet - The Prehistory of Sweets, by Laura Mason
ISBN: 0907325 831

Lorix
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From:
cook-flowers-msg  (78K)  2/23/01    Cooking with flowers. Medieval flower dishes
http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD/cooking-flowers-msg.html
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Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2000 15:45:49 -0500 (EST)
From: alysk at ix.netcom.com
Subject: SC - Violet Recipes

Greetings.  Here are a bunch of violet gleanings from various
sources.  Note the use of gum arabic.  Many of the ones I didn't
copy are for violets solidified in a chunk of sugar, probably making
the violet unrecognizable since hot sugar and a delicate violet work
hazards on the flower.  -- Alys Katharine

Martha Washington's _Booke of Cookery_:

"To candy flowers in theyr naturall culler"  (#S85) ñ "Take ye flowers with theyr stalks, & wash them in rose water, wherein gum arabeck is dissolved. then take fine searced sugar, & dust it over them. & set them A drying in a sive, set in an oven. & (they will) glister like sugar candy."

"To candy violet flowers" (#S86) ñ "Take violets which are new & well cullered. weigh them, and to every ounce of flowers take 4 ounces of very white refined sugar, & dissolve it in 2 ounces of water soe boyle it till it turn to sugar again, & scum it very often that it may be very clear, then take it of & let it coole. after, put in yr violet flowers, stiring them together till ye
sugar grow hard to ye pan. yn put them in a box & keep them to dry in a stove.

_A Closet for Ladies and Gentlewomen_, printed by John Haviland, 1636.

"To candie all manner of flowers in their naturall colours" ñ "Take the Flowers with the stalks and wash them over with a little Rose-water, wherein Gum-arabecke is dissolved; then take fine searced Sugar, and dust over them, and let them a drying on the bottome of a Sieve in an Oven, and they will gilster as if it were Sugar-candie."

_The Ladies Cabinet_, 1655

"To candy all kinde of Flowers as they grow, with their stalks on." (#40) ñ "Take the Flowers, cut the stalks somewhat short, then take one pound of the whitest and hardest sugar you can get, put to it eight spoonfuls of Rose-water, and boil it till it will roul between your finger and your thumb; then take it from the fire, cool it with a stick, and as it waxeth cold, dip in all your
Flowers, and taking them out again suddenly, lay them one by one on the bottom of a sieve; then turne a joyned stool with the feet upward, set the sieve on the feet thereof, cover it with a fair linne cloth, and set a chafingdish of coals in the middest of the stool, underneath the sieve, and the heat thereof will run up to the sieve, and dry your Candy presently; then box them up, and they will keep all the yeer, and looke very pleasantly."

_The Second Part of the Good Hus-wives Jewell_, Thomas Dawson, 1597.

"To make sirrope of Violets" ñ "First gather a great quantity of violet flowers, and pick them cleane from the stalkes and set them on the fire, and put to them so much Rosewater as you thinke good, then let them boile altogether untill the colour be forth of them then take them of the fire and straine them through a fine cloth, then put so much suger to them as you thinke good, then set it against the fire until it be somewhat thick, and put it into a violl glasse."

_A True Gentlewoman's Delight_, W.I., Gent., 1653

"To make Oyle of Violets." ñ "Set the Violets in Sallade oyle, and strain them, then put in other fresh Violets, and let them lye twenty dayes, then strain them again, and put in other fresh Violets, and let them stand all the year."
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Stefan li Rous
stefan at texas.net