[Sca-cooks] Re: Candied Lemon Peel

[Elise Fleming]

Jadwiga wrote:
 
>Someone asked me "aren't candied lemon peels supposed to be dry?" And I
>thought about it, and the fact that they are referred to as a 'sucket',
>and eaten with 'sucket forks' and thought, wouldn't it be more usual for
>them to be somewhat sticky, if you have to eat it with a fork?

Johnnae and I seem to disagree on what "dry" means.  She makes a peel that
has sugar crystals on it and the peel is _dry_, no moisture.  Mine lacks
the sugar crystals.  The peel itself is moist, sometimes requiring a roll
in sugar to de-sticky-fy it.  I use Dawson's 1597 recipe which also has a
long soak/cook period as you mentioned with Le Menagier, but it uses sugar
rather than honey.  There are some cooked peel recipes (one in honey and
spices comes to mind) that one keeps in the syrup.  That would require the
use of a sucket fork.
 
Jadwiga, I'll send you my worked-out version of Dawson via private e-mail
since it's really long and may well have been posted here some years ago.  

Alys Katharine