Cherry Comfits
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the cherries
Roll the dried cherries in your hands to make them round.
Place them in a sieve sprinkled with fine sugar and roll them to prevent sticking.
Coat and dry
Put the cherries in the stove until dry.
Transfer them to a comfit pan and add gum Senegal, stirring lightly to moisten evenly.
Add very finely sifted sugar, dry them well, and return to the stove for 2-3 hours.
Repeat the process and dry them in the stove for a day.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Dried cherries
- Provide the fruit base and chewy body that the sugar coating surrounds.
- Fine sugar
- Forms a dry, crisp outer shell that keeps the cherries from sticking together.
- Gum senegal
- Binds the sugar to the fruit and gives the coating a smooth, glossy finish.
The step that matters
Drying each sugar layer fully. Moisture left under a sugar coating keeps it sticky or lets it crack later. Each layer must be dry before the next is added, which is why the process is repeated.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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