Barberry Drops
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fruit
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 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 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
- Black tops of barberries
- Barberries are the main fruit, supplying the pulp and tart juice that make up the drops.
- Double-refined sugar
- Sugar thickens the pulp as it is beaten, giving the drops their firm, sweet body.
The step that matters
Beating the sugar and juice. Beating must run for the full time stated, 2½ or 3½ hours depending on batch size. Sugar dissolves into the thickened juice slowly, and stopping early leaves the drops soft and sticky rather than 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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