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To Candy Currants, Barberries, and Other Fruit

A method for candying fruit such as currants or barberries in clarified sugar and pounded loaf sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,256 recipes. The science ↓

To Candy Currants, Barberries, and Other Fruit

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the fruit in clarified sugar as for preserving.

  2. Remove the fruit from the syrup and drain it on sieves.

  3. Sift pounded loaf sugar over the fruit until it is completely white.

  4. Place the fruit in a cool oven.

  5. Turn the fruit, dusting with sugar until dry.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Currant and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Clarified sugar
Forms a syrup that the fruit cooks in, sweetening it and drawing out its moisture.
Pounded loaf sugar
Dusts the fruit to form a dry, white sugar coating as it dries.

The step that matters

Dusting with sugar until dry. Sifting sugar over the fruit while it is still tacky lets a coating form. Turning the fruit as it dries keeps the pieces from sticking together and gives an even finish.

“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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