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Bonbons: Stir
HOW TO DIP WITH FONDANT Just a word in regard to the dipping, and preparing the fondant for dipping. Place the fondant in a double boiler or in a bowl and place the bowl in a saucepan of hot water. The fondant should be melted to about the consistency of thick cream. Be careful that it does not get too hot or it will become a syrup again. Stir occasionally while melting and this will help it to melt not only evenly, but more quickly. If the fondant is very dry a few drops of water may be added, but be very careful not to get too much water in or the bonbons will not harden up well. When ready to dip remove the fondant from the fire, but let the bowl remain in the hot water. Take up the centers to be dipped on a candy dipper or fork and drop into the bowl, then lift them out, scrape off any surplus fondant with a knife, and drop on oiled or waxed paper or smooth tin slightly oiled. These will harden very quickly. One can make a twist on the top of them like the chocolates, but this must be done just as soon as dipped. The fondant can be flavored and colored in any way desired while it is melting.
ORIENTAL BONBONS These cream chocolates are more difficult to make than the common chocolate creams, but one is well repaid for the trouble for they are simply delicious. To make them take two cupfuls of granulated sugar, one-half cupful of water, one-half teaspoonful of glycerine and one-fourth teaspoonful of cream of tartar or three drops acetic acid. Stir until the sugar is dissolved, then wipe down the sides of the kettle to remove all sugar crystals. Boil to exactly 238 degrees, then pour out on a platter or marble slab and flavor with one-half teaspoonful of vanilla. Allow it to stand undisturbed until all heat has left it, then place over it the white of one egg beaten until very stiff, then cream the batch as you do in making fondant, but work it very slowly, as this gives it more chance to become firm. If it is too soft to work up in shape of bonbons, just let stand a little while, and then shape. In molding remember the less they are handled the easier they will be to coat, as handling has a tendency to soften them. Coat immediately after being molded, and this must be done as quickly as possible. Place on paraffine paper and let stand a day or so, and then the centers will be like whipped cream, as the white of egg will mellow the cream.
Two things sit on this page: a sound method for melting and dipping fondant, and a recipe for Oriental Bonbons whose centers are finished with uncooked egg white and then held at room temperature for a day or more. The dipping notes still work; the bonbon centers as written are a raw-egg confection and should not be made.
- Why the bonbons failThe egg white is beaten stiff and worked into fondant that has already cooled to room temperature, so it is never heated at all. The batch is then held a day or two at room temperature to "mellow" — that is deliberate time at the temperature range where Salmonella on shell eggs multiplies. Sugar concentration in a soft fondant is not high enough to be reliably self-preserving once diluted with egg white. Use a current recipe if you want a marshmallow- or Italian-cream-style center.
- Fondant for dipping: the hinge"Be careful that it does not get too hot or it will become a syrup again" is the whole technique. The book gives no figure, but confectionery practice generally keeps melted dipping fondant somewhere around 140-150F over hot water; take it much hotter and the fine crystal structure goes back into solution, and the candy tends to set sticky and translucent rather than opaque.
- "Remove from the fire, but let the bowl remain in the hot water"This is a working temperature instruction, not a resting step. Off the heat, the residual hot water holds the fondant fluid long enough to dip a batch without pushing it over.
- ThinningA few drops at a time is literal. Water thins fondant far faster than expected, and an over-thinned coating stays tacky rather than setting to a firm shell.
- Kettle, platter, marble slab"Kettle" here means a heavy saucepan, not a teakettle. A marble or granite slab cools sugar syrup fastest and most evenly; a chilled rimmed sheet pan is the usual substitute.
- Paraffine paperWax paper. Modern parchment or a silicone mat works as well and does not transfer wax to the candy.
- 238FWithin the soft-ball range. The original's "exactly" is fair enough: a few degrees either way noticeably affects how soft the creamed batch is and how easily it holds a shape. Calibrate the thermometer in boiling water first and adjust for altitude.
- Glycerine and acetic acidBoth are still sold: glycerine as food-grade glycerin, acetic acid as the acid in vinegar. But "three drops acetic acid" specifies no strength, and there is no way to know from the page what concentration was intended, so the drops are not reproducible. The cream of tartar alternative is the measurable one.
- "Cream the batch"Agitating the cooled syrup with a scraper or spatula to force fine crystallization. Working it slowly, as the text says, gives smaller crystals and a smoother texture; rushing it produces a grainy paste.
Fondant dipping was the domestic answer to the confectioner's shop window. By the early twentieth century American home-candy manuals — of which this is one of many — assumed a household could buy granulated sugar cheaply, and some, like this one, worked by thermometer degrees rather than the older cold-water tests. The word bonbon is French, conventionally explained as doubled child's speech for "good"; in American trade usage of this period it often denoted a fondant-coated center as distinct from a chocolate-coated one. "Oriental" as a candy name in this era rarely signals anything geographic; it was a general trade adjective for a luxurious or exotic-seeming sweet, much as "French" was used. The acid in the syrup inverts a fraction of the sugar and the glycerine acts as a humectant; both help keep the finished center soft in the box — comparable to the reasoning behind the corn syrup in a modern fondant recipe.