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Molasses Candy
Take equal quantities brown sugar and Orleans molasses (or all molasses may be used), and one table-spoon sharp vinegar, and when it begins to boil skim well and strain, return to the kettle and continue boiling until it becomes brittle if dipped in cold water, then pour on a greased platter. When cool enough, begin to throw up the edges and work, by pulling until bright and glistening like gold; flour the hands occasionally, draw into stick size, rolling to keep round, until pulled out and cold. With a greased knife press nearly through them at proper lengths, and they will easily snap; flavor just before pouring out to cool. --Sterling Robinson.
A straightforward pulled taffy that depends entirely on hitting the right sugar temperature, then working the mass while it is still hot enough to move. The cold-water test in the original is reliable, but a candy thermometer removes the guesswork.
- Hardness, in numbers"Brittle if dipped in cold water" points to the hard-crack range, around 300-310F. Pulled taffies are often taken lower, in the soft-crack range, which gives a softer, chewier result; syrup carried much past hard crack risks a scorched, bitter molasses flavour.
- Orleans molassesNew Orleans molasses was the light-to-medium cane syrup of the period, not blackstrap. Use unsulphured mild or full-flavour molasses; blackstrap is bitter and will not pull to a pale gold.
- Equal quantitiesThe recipe gives no absolute amount. Two cups molasses to two cups packed brown sugar with the tablespoon of vinegar makes a manageable batch, somewhere between a pound and a half and two pounds of finished candy.
- What the vinegar doesThe acid inverts some of the sucrose during boiling, which keeps the syrup from crystallising into grain when it is pulled. Do not leave it out, and do not stir the syrup once it is boiling.
- Skim and strainBrown sugar and unrefined molasses throw a scum as they heat. Skimming and straining early, before the syrup thickens, removes it, as the recipe directs.
- The pouring surfaceA "greased platter" can be replaced by a buttered marble slab or a heavy rimmed sheet pan; thin ceramic risks cracking from thermal shock with syrup this hot. Expect the edges to cool first -- hence the recipe's instruction to begin by throwing up the edges.
- FlavouringAdd it off the heat, just before pouring, as the recipe says. Vanilla, oil of peppermint or oil of lemon all burn off if stirred into boiling syrup. A teaspoon of extract or a few drops of candy oil is enough.
- PullingStart folding the edges in as soon as the sheet holds a dent, and wear clean cotton gloves or heavily butter the hands. Flouring the hands, as directed, works but leaves a faint dustiness; butter is cleaner. Pull until the strand lightens from dark brown to opaque gold, about ten minutes.
- StorageMolasses candy is hygroscopic and will go sticky in a humid kitchen. Make it on a dry day, wrap the pieces individually in waxed paper, and keep them in a tin rather than the refrigerator.
Pulled molasses candy was a common sweet in the nineteenth-century American home, cheap enough to make in quantity because molasses was the everyday sweetener and refined white sugar the expensive one. The taffy pull or "candy pull" was a recognised social occasion, particularly in winter, and the physical business of two people stretching a rope of hot sugar between them gave the gathering its point. The technique aerates the candy and lightens its colour, an effect long achieved in practice before anyone described it as incorporating air into a supersaturated sugar mass. Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping, compiled in Minneapolis in 1877, prints this one under Sterling Robinson's name, and the attribution is typical of the book, which credits its recipes to named contributors.