Comfit

Comfit is an archaic English word for an item of confectionery, equivalent to the French dragee. It consists of a seed or nut coated in several layers of sugar.

To make one, the seed is coated with sugar syrup in repeated layers. Up to a dozen coats of syrup were needed before the seeds were satisfactorily encrusted, which made comfits a slow, patient job that built the shell up gradually, layer by layer, until it was thick and hard.

Today the same idea lives on in panned candies and sugar-coated almonds, and in the small sugar pearls used to decorate cakes and cookies.