Orange-Flower Candy

Instructions

1. Beat about the fourth part of the white of an egg into three-quarters of a pint, or rather more, of water, and pour it on two pounds of the best sugar broken into lumps.
2. When it has stood a little time, place it over a very clear fire and let it boil for a few minutes, then set it on one side until the scum has subsided; clear it off.
3. Boil the sugar until it is very thick.
4. Strew in by degrees three ounces of the petals of the orange-blossom, weighed after they are picked from their stems. Do not add them too soon or they will turn brown: the syrup should be more than three parts boiled when they go in.
5. Continue to stir the candy until it rises in one white mass in the pan.
6. Then lay it, as quickly as it can be done, in cakes with a large spoon, upon thick and very dry sheets of writing paper placed quite flat upon the backs of dishes, or upon trays.
7. Take it off before it is entirely cold, and lay the candy reversed upon dishes, or place the cakes on their edges round the rim of one until they are perfectly cold.
8. Then secure them from the air without delay in close-shutting tin boxes or canisters. They will remain excellent for more than a year.
9. Gather the orange-flowers on the day they are wanted for use, as they will soon become discoloured from keeping.
10. Proportions: sugar, 2 lbs.; water, 3/4 pint; 1/4 white of egg; orange-blossoms, 3 oz.
11. Obs. (Acton): when sugar of the finest quality is used for this confection, as it ought to be, it will not require the white of egg to clarify it.
12. Acton's footnote on the dishes and trays: as the heat of the boiling sugar would injure these, no good ones should be used for the purpose.