candied fruit is whole fruit or pieces of fruit preserved with sugar through a series of operations in which the natural liquid of the fruit is replaced by sugar. To some extent, candied fruit has affinities with fruit pastes, marmalades, and jams, but differs from these products in that candying requires a sequence of operations over a week or more. Candied fruit is alternatively known as crystallized fruit or glacé (or glacéed) fruit, depending on the product, the country, and the type of finish, but the process is basically the same: steeping cooked fruit in increasingly concentrated sugar solutions so that, by osmosis, the sugar permeates the fruit and reaches a concentration that will ensure the stability of the final product. Candied fruit is “dry”; it might be sticky, but it does not need to be submerged in sugar syrup for storage, although the earliest forms of candied fruit probably were.
