[Sca-cooks] Citrus peel candied

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

>Date: Thu, 16 May 2019 23:53:03 -0500
>From: Douglas Bell <debell77840 at gmail.com>
>
>Since both the Florilegium and the list search are down, does anyone have a
>period recipe for candied citrus peel?
>If one has been posted on the list it would help to know the date.
>
>Best regards
>Magnus

This hasn't been posted to the list before. It's a circa 1430 Ottoman recipe from the manuscript by Shirvani, my translation, with corrections and notes by Mary Isin.

[132 verso] Ağaç kavunu Murabbası — Candied Citron Peel
Directions: Cut citron, remove the thin outermost layer of the peel.
--- [Note from Mary Isin: I have checked with later Ottoman recipes 
--- and this part is always removed because it is particularly bitter. 
--- Also as the photos below show, this fruit has a knobbly surface, 
--- which is cut away. Friedrich Unger says the citrons are first 
--- “finely peeled”. My husband’s aunt used to make grapefruit peel jam 
--- and grated off the outer skin using the fine side of a grater]
And make [the rest of the peel] into slices. Soak the following 7 days and nights in salt water, changing the salt water every two days. Then soak for one day and one night in lime water [quicklime]. Then leave the material in fresh water and keep for 7 days, change the water every day until all salt is removed. Then soak in sugar syrup until it sinks. Leave for ten days, stir. As the syrup [133 recto] decreases, add more back in. [When] the slices have completely absorbed the syrup, remove from the syrup, clarify this syrup, boil [the fruit] in this very syrup. After it reaches consistency [i.e. thickens] keep thirty or forty days in [remaining] syrup [which may have rosewater in it]. Then remove, arrange on trays, cover the top with a clean cloth, let it stand in the sun to dry until it turns into nebât, i.e. crystallises, put in kovanlara [wooden containers], eat at any time. Bitter/ Sevile orange and lemon peel can be done like this.

Note from Mary Isin: Based on historical and modern recipes, during the “thirty or forty days” of keeping the pieces in syrup, they were removed every day with a strainer spoon, the syrup brought to the boil, removed from the heat, and the pieces put back in.

Urtatim al-Qurtubiyya