Crystallizing Fruit

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 454, 15 March 1890, Page 4

Crystallizing Fruit

Though no authority on crystallizing fruit, i. c. , professionally, there is a simple process for home crystallizing, which I know of. The fruit is dried first. For this the finest fruit is selected. It must be very ripo, then thoroughly dried, and after this “sweated.” Then it is dipped in the very heaviest syrup one can make, say that used for candied fruit, which is a gill of water to a pound of sugar. I can give no exact rule for time of dipping, two or three minutes in the hot syrup. Then the fruit is dried again. This process makes a delicious article, and for this reason. The dried fruit, without sugar, retains all the fruity flavour, and the dipping process after the drying docs not penetrate the fruit so as to destroy its fine, natural flavour, but merely adds to it tho taste of the sugar crystals which are formed on the surface. It is unnecessary to say that the very best granulated sugar should be used. I might add that some confound crystallized fruit with sweetmeats or candied fruit. As lun lerstand tbe matter the difference between them is this : for the former the fruit is dipped in the syrup after being dried, not cooked in it; while for the latter the fruit is cooked, slowly and carefully, in the heavy syrup, and then dried.