[Sca-cooks] Candied fruits

[Stefan li Rous]

MD/Marged asked:
> Since Devra mentioned candying pears, I thought I'd follow up with a 
> few
> questions of my own.
As far as Devra's questions about a pear-flavored? chunk of sugar, I'm 
thinking that turning it into some pear flavored "rock candy" might be 
nice. Or perhaps the flavor would work well with certain seeds to make 
comfits:
comfits-msg       (48K)  6/18/04    Period candied spices and seeds. 
Recipes.
http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-SWEETS/comfits-msg.html
Or perhaps the flavored sugar would work well as part of a cake icing?
Sugar-Icing-art   (36K) 11/10/01    "Sugar Icing" by Johnnae llyn 
Lewis. Some
                                        notes on sugar icing in late 
period.
sugar-icing-msg    (6K)  1/16/02    Period sugar icing/frosting.

Hmmm. Along similar lines to Devra's leftovers:
flavord-sugars-msg (6K)  3/22/04    Period flavored, infused sugars.
http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-SWEETS/flavord-sugars-msg.html
> How large a pear is practical for this? Does one leave the skins on and
> just stab the pears with a needle or something? How ripe should the
> pears be?
I suspect you are going to want to cut the pear up into pieces since 
you want the sugar syrup to completely penetrate the pear. In period, 
at least for peels, they dipped the peels in the syrup many, many times 
more than usually seems to be the case today.
candied-peel-msg  (52K)  6/19/04    Candied fruit peels. A late period 
treat.
http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-SWEETS/candied-peels-msg.html
Candying-art       (9K)  6/29/99    Period and modern descriptions of 
the
                                       candying process by Alys 
Katharine.
http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-SWEETS/Candying-art.html
Another period favorite was a wet sweet where the fruit was packed in a 
syrup rather than being totally dried out.
suckets-msg        (7K)  4/ 1/02    Spices, fruit or fruit peel in a 
sugar syrup
http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-SWEETS/sugar-msg.html
> Is there any reason not to use a Teflon coated saucepan for this?
Yes. Non-teflon pans are often cheaper than teflon coated ones are. 
Apparently some folks have ruined their pans with the sugar syrup, 
although you can usually clean off the hardened syrup with a bit of 
soaking and scrubbing. See the comments about this in the files.
> with a whole bunch of D'Anjou pears staring at her . . .
Oh? Are you sure you got pears? Perhaps these are potatoes? I don't 
remember pears having eyes.
:-)

You might also consider:
fruit-pears-msg   (24K)  6/12/04    Period pears and pear recipes.
http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-FRUITS/fruit-pears-msg.html
perry-msg         (10K) 11/30/01    A cider made with pear juice.
http://www.florilegium.org/files/BEVERAGES/perry-msg.html

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****