To Prepare Barberries for Tartlets
Ingredients
Directions
Soften the fruit
Remove the barberries from the stalks, ensuring there are no stones.
Place the fruit in a stone jar and set it on a hot hearth or in a saucepan of water.
Simmer slowly until soft.
Make the syrup and prepare
Combine the fruit and sugar in a preserving pan and boil gently for 15 minutes.
Use only silver utensils.
Prepare flat sticks of wood, 3 inches long and ¼ inch wide.
Tie the stalks of the barberries to the sticks for presentation.
Candy the fruit
Simmer the barberries in syrup for two days, covering them with syrup when cold. When they look clear, they are done.
On the third day, treat them like other candied fruit.
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
- The fruit that softens during simmering and then absorbs the sugar syrup to become candied.
- Lump sugar
- Provides sweetness and, as a thick syrup, preserves the fruit by drawing out its water.
The step that matters
Keeping the fruit covered in syrup over two days. Fruit left exposed to air dries out and can crystallise or spoil, so covering it with syrup each time it cools keeps it moist and lets sugar slowly replace the fruit's water.
“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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