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The Swarm: Honey-gems
Honey To-day confectionery is made principally of sugar, and fruits are generally preserved in it instead of in honey, the "quaint and lady-like palates " of the present day preferring sugar as being more delicate in flavor and making a less rich conserve, moreover, it is cheaper.
Yet honey is not wholly discarded in the manufacture of "sweetmeats;" as witness the famous "honey cakes of Nuremberg," and as well the honey cakes sold at the French fairs, concerning which Langstroth says, - "In France, 'pain-d'épice,' 'ginger-bread,' is sold in immense quantities at the fairs. The best makes are sold at the most important fairs throughout the country. It keeps an indefinite length of time, and farmers' wives are wont to buy enough to last for months. The following is the recipe : - "Dissolve four ounces of soda in a glass of warm skimmed milk. Take four pounds of flour and pour in the milk and enough warm honey to make a thick dough, flavor with anise and coriander seeds, cloves, and cinnamon, all powdered fine; knead carefully, as you would bread. Let it rise two hours in a warm place, spread in pans and bake in a moderately warm oven. Ten or twelve minutes will do, if the cakes are thin. As soon as the cake resists to the touch of the finger, it is done. Before baking, it may be decorated with almonds, preserved lemon peel, etc. Wheat flour makes good 'pain-d'épice,' but some prefer rye flour. Fall honey is preferable for it, on account of its strong taste."
We are told that the gems and jumbles of the following two recipes are made by bakers and confectioners on a large scale, one firm in Wisconsin alone using ten tons of honey annually in their manufacture.
Honey-gems. 2 qts. flour, 3 tablespoonfuls melted lard, pt. honey, pt. molasses, 4 heaping tablespoonfuls brown sugar, 1½ level tablespoonfuls soda, I level teaspoonful salt, pt. water, ½ teaspoonful extract vanilla. Honey jumbles. 2 qts. flour, 3 tablespoonfuls melted lard, I pt. honey, 4 pt. molasses, 1½ level tablespoonfuls soda, I level teaspoonful salt, 1/4 pt. water, 1/2 teaspoonful vanilla.
There are innumerable recipes for making cakes and candies of honey, and fruits are still often preserved in it. Jams too are made with honey, and fresh fruits may be kept by simply covering them with honey and allowing them to stand, when they are said to acquire a delicious flavor; this is more reasonable than the statement of Hippocrates, that if the seeds of cucumbers and other plants are first soaked in honey and then planted, "the fruit that groweth of them will taste the sweeter."
A delicious vinegar can be made from honey, which some prefer even to wine vinegar.
A pound and a half of pure honey to a gallon of water is the usual recipe for vinegar, in which fermentation may be hastened by adding a little mother of vinegar.
The value of honey as a food and its superiority to sugar is recognized in many homes, where it is in constant use, particularly for children.
It has always been considered good for the aged, and there was a wide-spread belief in former times that it preserved those who ate it to an extreme old age; and Pliny tells us that the people of Corsica were famous for being long-lived, and that this was attributed to their use of honey. Besides the large apiaries containing thousands of hives and yielding an annual income of many thousands of dollars, there are everywhere to be seen in this country stands of half-a-dozen or more hives kept by the farmers, who sometimes make as much profit from their bees as from their cattle or other live-stock.
Honey Again, one may see a row of hives in a village yard, or even in the yard or on the house-roof in a large city, where the eager little workers hie them away to the parks or the back yards and bring home abundant stores of sweets. The present writer, while walking in a crowded part of New York City, has had a handful of flowers plundered by honey-bees.
Sometimes a glass hive is attached to a school-room window, where the children at any time can safely watch the movements of the busy occupants.
Again, the glass hive has its place in the home, affording recreation to the family.
There has been such a revival of interest in bees and honey the past few years that the hive is almost as common in many sections as the hen-house or the corn-crib.