Barberry Drops
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the barberries
Cut off the black tops of the barberries.
Roast the fruit over a fire until soft enough to pulp through a sieve into a bowl.
Make the drops
Set the bowl in a saucepan of water or on a hot hearth and stir until thick.
Once cold, mix in 1½ pounds of pounded and sifted sugar.
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.
Ensure no metal touches the juice, using only 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 juice and pulp that give the drops their flavour and body.
- Double-refined sugar
- Sweetens the juice and, when beaten in, helps the mixture thicken and set into drops.
The step that matters
Beating the sugar and juice for the full time. Long beating dissolves the sugar fully and incorporates air, so the mixture firms and holds its shape when dropped. Stopping early can leave grainy, soft drops.
“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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