Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 July 1896 — Famous Candy of New England. [ARTICLE]

Famous Candy of New England.

A halo of romance hangs around the yweet flag beds, with their long, graceful, sword-like blades of pale; tender green. Tis is the “calamus” of the ■shapes hallowed by the traditions Of manty fair maidens who yearly ej’ed its sweet rootstalk and from them the excellent “meeting” candy—a bonbon that whiled away the tediousness of those long sermons of generations ago. There are many families that, still prepare this sweet flag candy in the old New England way. The sweet flag must not be confounded with the blue-flower, which blooms in every marshy place at this season of the year.- The blue flag is an iris, with a much shorter and darker bluegreen leaf: the sweet flag is an arum. Its miniature green flowers are easily found in June, and this is the proper season to gather the root. Scrape the earth from the long root-stalks, a.'d, with a sharp knife, cut them out of the ground, to whitjh they are held by numerous root fibers. Bring large roots home and scrape them thorouglvly. as you would a parsnip or other root, to' remove the skin. Cut the roots in the thinnest slices possible, and boil them in water for an hour or more. Remove them from this water, then boil them in another water. Throw off this brackish water and repeat the process a third time, when the sweet flag is ready to candy. Prepare a sirup

of a cup of water with a pound of sugar. Flit in the cooked slices of sweet flag, and boil them down until tlie sirup candies around them? Stir them, and when the sugar becomes white and the sirup seems to be absorbed, take up the candied slices with a skimmer, So as to drain them, and cool them a little in the air. Tut them in a large pan and stir them repeated? ly while drying. In a day or two the confection will be ready. It is a dry, snowy white candy, delicious in flavor, and was supposed by our ancestors to possess powers of healing “vague humors of the blood." No more picturesque receptacle for this candy could be imagined than a covered bonbonniere, painted with the swordlike leaves and pale green spadix of calamus, with perhaps also a spray of the water arum or American calla, which is of the same family and habit as the.calamus, arid one which often grows near it.