Candied Violets
Ingredients
Directions
Candy the violets
Break off the heads of the violets.
Dissolve isinglass in water and dip the violets in it.
Coat the violets in cooled spun sugar.
Sprinkle the violets with powdered sugar.
Place them on sheets of white paper in a warm place, avoiding the oven.
Make the spun sugar
To make spun sugar, boil loaf sugar in water until it forms strings when dipped.
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
- Fine double violets
- The flower being candied, supplying the delicate flavour and colour of the finished sweets.
- Isinglass
- Forms a thin, sticky film on the petals that helps the sugar coating adhere.
- Loaf sugar
- Boiled into spun sugar, it makes a crisp, sweet, glassy coating once cooled.
- Finest powdered sugar
- Dusted on as a fine, dry layer that softens the sheen and adds sweetness.
The step that matters
Coating the violets in cooled spun sugar. Spun sugar must be cooled before the violets are coated. Sugar boiled to the strings stage hardens as it cools, so coating too early leaves a sticky, syrupy layer that does not set crisp.
“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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