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Molasses Candy
2 cupfuls brown sugar 1/4 cupful molasses 3 tablespoonfuls Crisco 1/4 teaspoonful salt 1 gill water 1 teaspoonful vanilla extract Dissolve sugar in water in saucepan over fire, then add Crisco, molasses, and salt and boil until when tested in cold water it forms a hard ball, or 254 degree F. Now add vanilla and pour into Criscoed tin. When quite cold break into rough pieces.
A straightforward boiled sugar candy from one of Procter & Gamble's Crisco promotional cookbooks. The only real technique is the thermometer, and the recipe helpfully gives you the number.
- A gillHalf a cup, four fluid ounces. That is the whole liquid content, so measure it properly rather than eyeballing it.
- CriscoPlain vegetable shortening; the book was written to sell it. Unsalted butter works and tastes better, though it browns a little faster. "Criscoed tin" simply means a greased pan.
- 254 F is the hingeUse a candy thermometer and trust it over the cold-water test. Hard ball runs 250-266 F; at 254 F the candy sets firm but still yields to a hard bite.
- Don't stir after it boilsDissolve the sugar fully before the syrup comes to a boil, then leave it alone. Stray crystals on the pan wall will seed the whole batch grainy; wash them down with a wet pastry brush.
- Pan sizeBrown sugar syrup foams up considerably once the fat goes in. Use a saucepan at least three times the volume of the ingredients, and a heavy-bottomed one so the molasses does not scorch.
- Setting tinAn 8-inch square pan gives a slab about half an inch thick. Let it cool undisturbed on a rack; "quite cold" means room temperature throughout, an hour or more.
- Yield and keepingRoughly a pound of candy. Store airtight with the pieces separated by waxed paper, or humidity will make the surface tacky.
- Humid daysBoiled sugar candies pull moisture out of the air. On a damp day the finished slab may never fully harden, which is not a fault in the recipe.
A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil and issued by Procter & Gamble to promote Crisco, the hydrogenated cottonseed shortening the company launched in 1911. That accounts for the tablespoons of Crisco in a candy that would traditionally have used butter, and for the instruction to grease the tin with it as well. Molasses candy itself is much older and thoroughly American, a domestic use for the cheap byproduct of sugar refining; pulled versions of the same boiled syrup were the basis of the taffy pull, a nineteenth-century social occasion in its own right.