Sugar-plums were a popular form of confectionery during the 19th century and became linked with Christmas through their inclusion in the poem ‘A Visit from St Nicholas’, also known as 'The Night Before Christmas’, and the character of the Sugar Plum Fairy in the ballet 'The Nutcracker’ by Tchaikovsky. Sugar-plums were not actually made from plums; the name refers to a range of traditional sweets known as comfits.
Comfits could contain a wide variety of ingredients including nuts, seeds and spices. The favoured ingredients for making sugar-plums were almonds, clove buds, caraway seeds, coriander seeds or cinnamon strips. These ingredients were individually coated in layers of boiling sugar syrup until they formed small balls with a thick, hard shell. They could be flavoured with ingredients such as rose or orange water and coloured by the introduction of edible pigments (spinach for green, saffron for yellow and beetroot for red) in the final layers of syrup. They were known as sugar-plums purely because of their finished size and resembled modern gobstoppers, aniseed balls or sugared almonds.
caramelcheese