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Honey Squares
1 cupful strained honey 1 cupful brown sugar 2 tablespoonfuls Crisco 1/2 cupful cream 1/4 teaspoonful salt Pinch cream of tartar 1 teaspoonful lemon extract Put Crisco, salt, honey, cream and sugar into saucepan; stir over slow fire until dissolved, then add cream of tartar. Boil until it forms a hard ball when tested in cold water, or 252 degree F. Remove from fire, stir in lemon extract, and pour into Criscoed tin. Mark into squares before cold. Wrap in waxed paper.
Sufficient for twenty-five squares.
A straightforward boiled honey caramel, and the temperature the original gives — 252°F — is the whole recipe. Everything else is assembly.
- Hit 252°F exactlyThat is the low end of the hard-ball range and it gives a chewy, sliceable candy. Take it well past that and you move toward soft crack (roughly 270°F and up), which sets brittle and shatters instead of cutting into squares. Use a digital thermometer and check it in boiling water first; at altitude, subtract about 2°F per 1,000 feet above sea level.
- CriscoStill sold, and the recipe was written to promote it. Any flavourless solid vegetable shortening works, as does butter, though butter will brown slightly and change the flavour. "Criscoed tin" simply means a greased pan.
- Slow fireLow heat until the sugar and honey are fully dissolved and the mixture is smooth — grit on the side of the pan seeds crystallisation later. Once it is clear, raise the heat and stop stirring.
- Cream of tartarAdded after dissolving, as an acid that inverts some of the sugar and keeps the finished candy from turning grainy. The honey does much of the same work, so the pinch is genuinely a pinch — about 1/8 teaspoon.
- CreamHalf a cup of what would have been heavy or at least rich cream. Use heavy cream; anything lighter has more water and will lengthen the boil considerably.
- Lemon extractStirred in off the heat so the alcohol and oils do not cook off. One teaspoon in this quantity is assertive; half a teaspoon reads more like honey and less like lemon drop.
- Pan and cuttingFor twenty-five squares, an 8-inch square pan gives pieces about 1 1/2 inches across at a good thickness. Score the surface with a buttered knife while the candy is still warm and pliable, then cut through when fully set.
- KeepingHoney is hygroscopic, so these go sticky in humid weather. The waxed paper wrapping in the original is not decorative — wrap each square and keep them in a tin.
A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil for Procter & Gamble to sell Crisco, which reached the market in 1911, and the book's habit of specifying Crisco in every conceivable dish — including candy, where the fat does almost nothing but keep things from sticking — is the advertising showing through. Honey-based caramels and taffies long predate refined-sugar confectionery, and boiled honey candies were made in American home kitchens well into the twentieth century; what marks this version as modern for its time is the stated thermometer reading, 252°F, alongside the older cold-water ball test. Candy thermometers were becoming more widely available to households in this period, and cookbooks of the era often give both methods.