Honey-candied orange peels

Another recipe from the aforementioned SCA event lunch, which was held this past Saturday. I served the orange peels as a little sweet bite for the end of the meal.

My recipe is a bit of a mishmash of modern method, a 13th Century Andalusian cookbook recipe translation of "orange paste" I found at http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/Cookbooks/Andalusian/andalusian10.htm#Heading528 and a recipe from Menagier de Paris translated in Pleyn Delit by C. Hieatt, B. Hosington and S. Butler as follows:

Cut the peel of an orange into five pieces and scrape away the skin inside with a knife; then set them to soak in pure fresh water for nine days, and change the water every day. Then boil them in pure water, but only until they come to a boil, and when this is done spread them on a cloth and let them dry out well. Then put them in a pot with enough honey to cover them and boil over a slow fire, skimming. And when you think that the honey is cooked (to test whether it is cooked, take some water in a spoon and pour into this water a bit of honey, and if it spreads it is not cooked; and if the honey stays in the water without spreading, it is cooked), then take out your orange peels and arrange them in a layer, and sprinkle powder of ginger over, then another layer, and sprinkle, etc., until finished; and leave a month or more before eating. (recipe 133, "Orangat")

I dispensed with the instructions for nine days of soaking orange peels and went with the more streamlined instructions from Judy Knipe and Barbara Marks' The Christmas Cookie Book, which tell the reader to soak the peels in cold water to loosen the membrane, scrape the webby membrane off the peel with a spoon, cut the peels in strips and do this four times: cover with cold water in a pot, bring to a boil, drain, rinse, drain. I didn't let the peels dry out for very long before starting the process of boiling them in honey.

I followed the candying instructions given in both the Andalusian recipe and the Menagier recipe, using the Menagier's candy-temperature testing instructions for soft-ball stage. Then I pulled the peels from the honey with tongs and spread them onto parchment paper on a table and let them dry out for about a week. After the week, they were still pasty and sticky, but I didn't try to make up for it by layering them with powdered ginger. I didn't want to have ginger in too many items at the lunch (it was already in the pies, the bread pudding, the pickled mushrooms and the sekanjabin). I considered cinnamon, but decided it overpowered the taste of orange. Instead, the peels were folded into little waxed paper packets for serving.

I do agree with the Menagier de Paris that the peels taste better with aging. After one week, they were less syrupy and mellower. After two weeks, the orange oil in the peels had more bite.