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Nut or Cocoanut Brittle
3 Cupfuls Coarsely-chopped Nut-meats or 2 Cupfuls Desiccated Cocoanut 2 Cupfuls Granulated Sugar 1 Tablespoonful Snowdrift Few Grains Soda Few Grains Salt Rub a small dripping-pan lightly with Snowdrift and sprinkle over the cocoanut or nut-meats. Put the sugar in a fryingpan and gradually melt it over a medium heat, stirring it up from the bottom of the pan, so that it will not burn. Then add the Snowdrift, salt and soda, and pour at once over the nut-meats or cocoanut.
When cold, break into irregular pieces.
A dry-caramel brittle with no water, no corn syrup and no thermometer — which means the whole recipe hinges on how you treat the sugar in the pan.
- The hinge: dry caramel moves fastTwo cups of sugar melted alone will go from clear amber to acrid black in under a minute at the end. Use a heavy skillet, keep the heat at medium, stir steadily, and pour the instant it is the colour of a copper penny — roughly 340–350F if you want a number.
- SnowdriftA cottonseed-oil shortening sold by the Southern Cotton Oil Company; later versions were hydrogenated, and it is no longer easy to find. Use a tablespoon of unsalted butter or any neutral solid shortening. The fat is there to keep the sheet from cementing itself to the pan and to soften the snap slightly.
- "Few grains soda"A pinch: an eighth of a teaspoon of baking soda at most. It gives off gas in the hot sugar and aerates it, which is what makes brittle break cleanly instead of shattering like glass.
- Dripping-panA shallow rectangular roasting or jelly-roll pan, about 10 by 15 inches. Grease it and lay the nuts out before you start the sugar; there is no time to do it afterward.
- Warm the nutsThe original does not say so, but cold nut-meats chill the caramel on contact and it stops spreading. Five minutes in a 250F oven while the sugar melts solves it, and toasted nuts taste better besides.
- Desiccated cocoanutUnsweetened dried shredded coconut, which is still sold under that description. Sweetened flaked coconut will scorch against the hot syrup; stay with unsweetened.
- YieldDepends on which version you make: roughly a pound and a half with three cups of nuts, noticeably less with the coconut. Either way it fills one sheet pan in a thin layer. Store airtight — dry caramel absorbs humidity and turns tacky within a day in a damp kitchen.
Snowdrift was one of the flagship products of the Southern Cotton Oil Company, and cookbooks like this one were promotional literature: recipes call for the brand by name, in quantities as small as a single tablespoon. Cottonseed oil had been a by-product of cotton growing until refiners in the nineteenth century found ways to purify it for the table, and shortenings such as Snowdrift and Crisco were marketed to households as cheaper, cleaner substitutes for lard and butter. The brittle itself is older than the branding — dry-caramel nut candies made in a skillet and poured onto a greased pan appear in American cookbooks before packaged shortening existed.