On (Artisan) Candied Fruit

One of the most interesting applications for syrups, or so I’ve always thought, is candied fruit. And I don’t really mean the neon-colored fruits we use for fruitcakes, though they’re terrific in the right context. What I’m talking about are whole candied fruits (also called glacéed fruit), which, depending on who makes them and where, can be nothing short of artworks. I remember, years ago, coming across some whole candied pears in Austria. They looked like they had been plucked right off the tree (better, really). But in fact they had been painstakingly preserved via soaking in syrup. Or perhaps I should say by soaking in many syrups, for getting that pristine just-picked look in a piece of candied fruit requires serial soaking in increasingly concentrated syrups over a period of many days, weeks…even months. This is why a single piece of fruit of this quality can easily set you back twenty or thirty bucks. But as I said, these sorts of confections aren’t candy so much as they are pieces of edible art. Amazing things to behold.