Sweet flag candy.

Sweet flag candy? This I'll have to try.

So I was idly trawling the web and found the Herb Companion pages. It's a good glossy, so let's see what they have online.

Heh. Sweet flag (Acorus calamus) candy. And sweet flag soup. I'll skip the soup, thanks ever so much (sweet flag has a strong taste), but the candy sounds intriguing.
They say to use fresh roots. Can't do that, not in mid-winter, so I'll use the weakest of the different dried root batches in my cupboard.

Their candy recipe:

Sweet Flag Candy
3 cups sweet flag roots, peeled and cut into pieces about ½ inch long
Water
4 cups sugar plus ½ cup sugar reserved
4 cups additional water

Cover root with water, boil for 10 minutes. Pour off the water, add fresh water and boil again. Repeat this 2 more times, in fresh changes of water each time.

Stir the 4 cups of sugar into the last 4 cups of water until dissolved, add the sweet flag and simmer slowly for 10 minutes. Drain and discard the sugar syrup. When the syrup has dripped off, roll the candy in the remaining ½ cup sugar, coating well, then lay out on waxed paper to dry for a day. Store in airtight container. The candy is a great nibble after meals (like an after-dinner mint) as well as soothing to sore throats.

Recipe courtesy of Jim Long.

Uh-oh, I've used up all my weak dried root slices, making an Egyptian ointment last year, so I'll have to use the one with the largest chunks, which is the stronger of the two kinds of dried calamus roots I have left. We'll see how things turn out:

Pic: Dried calamus. The largest chunks are about 1 cm long and perhaps ½ cm wide.

Henriette's sweet flag candy
I'm not going to discard any of the liquids; they go into a sweet flag syrup instead. That being said, here's the candy bit:

100 ml dried sweet flag root bits
water
400 ml + a bit sugar
400 ml water

Cover root with water, bring to a boil, let simmer for 10 minutes, pour off water,
add new water to cover, boil, simmer for 10 minutes, pour off water,
add new water to cover, boil, simmer for 10 minutes, pour off water,
add new water to cover, boil, simmer for 10 minutes, pour off water,
dissolve 400 ml sugar in 400 ml water, add sweet flag root, let boil for 10 minutes, pour off syrup.

Let drip and cool.
Roll sweet flag bits in sugar (I used normal sugar but I expect powdered sugar would work better), put on waxed paper, dry.

The taste at this stage: it's delicious at first, but then the sweet flag bitterness and hotness hits. Not all that good to nibble on.

Pic: Sugared calamus, drying on waxed paper.

Airdry: let sit for a few days, until dry.
Dehydrator: let run overnight, check dryness in the morning.

Put into jars when dry. Use as a digestive (= after dinner candy) or for things like sore throat.

The taste at this stage: no longer as hot or as bitter, it's nibbleable, at a rate of about 2-3 a day.

Related entry: Sweet flag syrup