DROPS (Confectionery)

These are confections of which the principal basis is sugar. They differ from lozenges chiefly in the ingredients being combined by the aid of heat. Occasionally they are medicated. Prep. Double refined sugar is reduced to powder, and pa ed through a hair sieve (not too fine), and afterwards through a gauze sieve, to take out the fine dust, which would destroy the beauty of the drop. It is then put into a clean pan, and moistened with any favorite aromatic, as rose or orange-flower water, added slowly, stirring it with a paddle all the time, from which the sugar will fall as soon as it is moist enough, without sticking. The colouring (if any) is next added, in the liquid state, or in very fine powder. A small, polished copper, or tinned-copper pan, furnished with a lip, is now one half or three parts filled with the paste, and placed over the fire, or over the hole of a stove, or preferably on a sand bath, and the mixture stirred with a little bone or gla spatula until it becomes liquid. As soon as it almost boils, it is taken from the fire, and if it is too moist, a little more powdered sugar is added, and the whole stirred, until it is of such a consistence as to run without too much extension. A tin plate, very clean and smooth, and very slightly oiled, being now ready, the pan is taken in the left hand, and a bit of bright iron, copper, or silver wire, about 4 inches long, in the right. The melted sugar is next allowed to fall regularly on the tin plate, the wire being used to remove the drop from the lip of the pan. In two or three hours afterwards the drops are taken off with the blade of a knife, and are at once put into bottles or tins. On the large scale, ‘confectionery drops’ are moulded by a machine consisting e entially of two metal rollers covered with hollows. A sheet of the warm and soft composition, on being pa ed between the rollers, is at once converted into a batch of symmetrical drops, the upper and lower halves being moulded by the corresponding hollows of the upper and lower rollers. See Candying , Confection , E ence , Stains (Confectioner’s), Sugar Plums . The following are a few of the principal confectionery drops kept in the shops:—