I-Candy: Iodine pastilles. Experiment #1

Iodine Cranberry Pates des fruits

I was inspired to do some experimentation with iodine cookery upon acquisition of this tin, Crooke's Iodine and Black Currant Pastilles.... :

From what I have been able to gather, these were manufactured in the early part of this century. Each pastille contained 1/10 grain iodine as collosol iodine A grain is 64.8 mg so 1/10 grain would be 6.48 mg. Pop two of these lovelies a day and you'd have close to the average Japanese intake of 12.5 mg iodine... 

Collosol is another term for colloidal. For more information on colloidal iodine:

colloidal iodine

These pastilles must have been similar to our lozenges as far as mouth feel and melt time. Pastilles were designed to dissolve slowly in the mouth releasing active ingredients over time. Another form of pastille though is a dense, chewy, fresh fruit based candy. Crooke's pastilles is advanced candy making. I am a rank amateur, however, so I decided to go with the fruity leathery stuff.

What I lack in skill, though, I make up with enthusiasm. 

I am continually amazed at the ways and means people used to get their daily dose of iodine back in the day. !!

So I started googling about. I wanted to find a recipe that would not completely fail as lugol's solution was added as it was cooling. The sublimation point for iodine is 237F. The "hard ball" stage for candy is 250F. So I certainly could not "cook" the iodine, although it would be lovely to watch the purple vapor. I decided on a fruit leather sort of concoction. My I-candy is loosely based on this recipe:

http://userealbutter.com/2013/11/20/cranberry-pate-de-fruits-recipe/

I followed this recipe although the exact measures are not the same. I also used apples for the added pectin. The end result is a quite tasty fruit gummi or leather that really does not taste of iodine. No, I do not claim 6.5mg per piece! That will be achieved later lol :)

I DO intend to experiment with true pastilles, or lozenges. This is my i-candy 101 experiment. It was fun, and the end result is quite tasty. Ridiculously sweet, of course but candy will not "set" without ridiculous amounts of sugar.

...Cooking down the cranberries, apples and lemon... 

The puree after blending and some straining. I did not use a fine strain. There was still particulate matter in the puree.

Sugar, sugar, sugar. The leather, gummi, whatever-you-wanna-call it will not solidify without lots of sugar.

After the mixture cooled below 237f we started adding lugol's iodine. This was fascinating....

As you can see the iodine floated on the surface and it took vigorous constant stirring to ensure even dispersion.

The color change was quite a show!

The entire mixture became very dark, almost an inky black. This was also the lighting and the pot. The mixture is not that dark, as you will see.

I poured some of the mixture into a buttered 8x8 baking dish. No parchment paper, alas.

...and some into a buttered candy mold. I'm not sure what went wrong here, but I was only able to get a couple of hearts out intact. Next time I'll use cookie cutters on a sheet of io-leather.



The end result, photographed under fluorescent and incandescent light.

Bon Apetit!