Candied Ginger

Kitab al-Ṭabīḫ (The Book of Dishes), al Baghdadi, written in 1226, p. 210/13

Take sugar, dissolve in water, and boil until set: then remove from the dish, and pour onto a soft surface to cool. Take an iron stake with a soft head and plant it into the mass, then pull up the sugar, stretching it with the hands and drawing it up the stake all the time, until it becomes white: then throw once more onto the surface. Knead in pistachios, and cut into strips and triangles. If desired, it may be colored, either with saffron or with vermilion. Sometimes it is crumbled with a little peeled almonds, sesame, or poppy.

A Compendyous Regyment, or A Dyetary of Helth. Andrew Boorde, 1542

Gynger Gynger doth hete the stomacke, and helpyth dygestyon: grene gynger eaten in the moreninge, fastynge, doth acuat and quicken the remembraunce.

Candied ginger "should" be within period. It is listed as one of the "thinges necessary for a banquet" (the dessert course) by Thomas Dawson, 1596, in _The Good Huswifes Jewell_. I am "assuming" that this is in candied form since the other items all have candied variations.

Recipes from the Tudor-Jacobean manuscript known as "A Booke of Sweetmeats" as found in Martha Washington’s Booke of Cookery. Edited with introduction and commentary by Karen Hess. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981. The manuscript is dated 1580-1625.

92 TO CANDY GINGER

Take faire & large ginger, pare it & lay it in water A day & a night.

then take double refined sugar & boyle it to ye height of sugar againe, & when it beginneth to be cold, take yr ginger & stir it well about till yr sugar is hard to yr pan. then take it out rase by rase, & lay it by ye fire for 4 houres. then take a pot & warme it & put the ginger in it, then ty it very close & every second morning, stir it about roundly, and it will be A rock candy in A very short space.

106 TO MAKE GREEN GINGER

Take ginger, pare it, & lay it in soack 2 days in white wine. then take ye weight in sugar, with which let it boyle leasurely halfe a day at least, & then pot it up.

The Ladies Cabinet, 1655

#43,  "To candy Ginger."

"Take very fair and large Ginger, and pare it, and then lay it in water a day and a night; then take your double refined sugar, and boile it to the height of sugar again: then when your sugar beginneth to be cold, take your ginger, and stir it well about till your sugar is hard to the pan; then take it out race by race, and lay it by the fire four hours, then tak a pot and warm it, and put the Ginger in it, then tie it very clsoe, and every second morning stir it about roundly, and it will be rock-candied in a very short space."

In this recipe the root (race) is not sliced into thin pieces to be candied.

The Experienced English Housekeeper, 1769

Beat two pounds of fine loaf sugar, put one pound in a tossing pan with as much water as will dissolve it, with one ounce of race [root] ginger grated fine. Stir them well together over a very slow fire till the sugar begins to boil, then stir in the other pound and keep stirring it till it grows thick, Then take it off the fire and drop it in cakes upon earthen dishes. Set them in a warm place to dry and they will look white and be very hard and brittle.