Barberry Drops
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the pulp
Cut off the black tops from the barberries.
Roast the fruit over a fire until soft enough to pulp through a sieve into a bowl.
Set the bowl over a saucepan of water or on a hot hearth and stir until thick.
Make the drops
Once cold, add 1½ pounds of pounded and sifted sugar for every pint of pulp.
Beat the sugar and juice together for 2½ hours for a small batch or 3½ hours for a large batch.
Drop the mixture onto sheets of thick white paper in the desired size.
Ensure no metal touches the juice except for the point of a knife to remove drops from the spoon.
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
- Barberries
- Provide the tart fruit pulp that forms the body and flavor of the drops.
- Double-refined sugar
- Sweetens the pulp and, once beaten, helps set the mixture into firm drops.
The step that matters
Beat the sugar and juice together for the full time. Long beating dissolves the sugar into the thickened juice and builds the stiff, glossy texture the drops need to hold their shape. Stopping early leaves a mixture that spreads and fails to set.
“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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