Max Miller Prepares Victorian Sugar Plums While Explaining There Are No Plums in the Recipe
Max MillerofTasting History prepared Victorian sugar plums, a candied confection that does not contain any plums whatsoever. He faithfully followed directions from a 1865 recipe, although he decided to use modern machinery rather than the traditional baking implements. The process was a bit onerous, taking Miller the whole weekend to prepare.
Around Christmas time you hear a lot about sugar plums, visions of sugar plums dancingin children's heads, the Sugar Plum Fairyfrom The Nutcracker. But what exactly is asugar plum? Because they don't have anythingto do with plums. So to answer the questionwhat are sugar plums I've decided to spendan entire weekend making a Victorian recipefor cherry sugar plums.
As with previous videos, Miller explained the history behind sugar plums, particularly how they got named.
In Medieval France they were called dragie or confit. Dragie, later dragee, wouldcome to refer mostly to nuts coated with sugar. Think Jordan almonds. While the spices werecalled confit or comfit in English. ...At the time the term plum could refer tomany things other than just an actual plum. Itcould refer to any small piece of dried fruitlike raisins, or zante currants, both being theplums added to plum pudding, and the term couldalso refer to just anything that was good or kind of rich...What is clear isthat soon after the word sugar plum started beingused to refer to these comfits.
Miller explained that it was a good experience but not worth so much time. He suggested some modern alternatives that are similar to sugar plums instead.
Anyway, delicious. Are they worth the work? Hehe. No they are not. Go get yourself some Jordan almonds, go get yourselfsome of these pine nut covered things. What's cool is these are actually made pretty much the sameway that they were in this cookbook, because theonly ingredients are sugar, pine nuts, and gumarabic. So made the same way which is prettycool.
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