Home › Hard Candied › Hard Candied
Hard Candied
MANY persons prefer the hard candies to the soft varieties. Most of these hard candies are boiled to the crack stage or hard crack stage, which is from 280 to 310 degrees. In testing these candies in cold water it is always advisable to remove from the fire while doing so, for when the syrup gets to the turning stage it will burn very soon if not watched. Other hard candies will be found classified under the chapter on nut candies, such as peanut brittle, nut nougats, etc.
CHOCOLATE CHIPS Place in a saucepan one cupful of brown sugar, one-half cupful of New Orleans molasses (the light colored molasses), and one tablespoonful of butter. Boil to the crack stage, then remove from the fire and flavor with one teaspoonful of vanilla. Pull into long thin sheets, and cut into small pieces. When cold dip into melted chocolate flavored with a little vanilla. CINNAMON JIBB Place in a saucepan one cupful of golden corn syrup, one-fourth cupful of butter, a table-spoonful of cinnamon, and one-half cupful of water. Boil to the crack stage. Pour into buttered pans, and mark off into squares. When cool break up.
Take two cupfuls of light brown sugar, one cupful of golden corn syrup and one-half cupful of water. Cook to the crack stage, and then stir in figs that have been cut up into bits. Pour into a buttered pan, and mark off. When cool break up. Date brittle can be made in the same manner. BUTTER-SCOTCH Take two cupfuls of light brown sugar, one-half cupful of butter, one-fourth cupful of water and one tablespoonful of vinegar. Boil to the crack stage. Pour into buttered tins, mark off into squares, and when cool break up. A table-spoonful or two of molasses improves butter-scotch for many persons. FRENCH BUTTER-SCOTCH Take two cupfuls of granulated sugar, one-half cupful of maple sugar, one-half cupful of butter, one tablespoonful of vinegar, and one-fourth cupful of water. Cook to the crack stage or to 280 degrees, then remove from fire and add one teaspoonful of vanilla, and one-fourth teaspoonful soda. Mark into strips, and when cold cut with a pair of shears.
MAPLE PANOCHA Take one cupful of maple sugar, one cupful of light brown sugar, two tablespoonfuls of butter, and one-half cupful of water. Boil to the crack stage. Pour over pecan meats that have been placed on a buttered pan. When cold break in any manner desired.
A short chapter of hard-boiled sugar work, all of it hanging on a single number: the crack stage. A candy thermometer removes nearly all the guesswork these instructions leave in place.
- The crack stage in numbersThe text gives 280-310F, which spans soft crack (270-290F) through hard crack (300-310F). For butterscotch and the brittles, 300-305F gives a clean snap; below about 290F the finished pieces stay chewy and go sticky in humid weather.
- Test off the heatThe advice to pull the pan from the burner before testing is the most useful line here. Once past 280F there is little water left to absorb heat, so the syrup keeps climbing while you test, and scorched sugar cannot be rescued.
- New Orleans molassesThe light-coloured cane molasses called for in the chocolate chips is closest to today's mild or original-flavour unsulphured molasses. Blackstrap is far more bitter and will overwhelm the brown sugar.
- Golden corn syrupThis means light corn syrup, used here as an interfering agent to stop the sugar crystallising. Substituting more sugar for it will give a grainy result.
- Maple sugarHard maple sugar is sold in blocks or as granules; grate or weigh it rather than packing a cup of irregular chunks. Maple syrup is not a direct swap, since it carries water the recipe does not account for.
- The soda in French butterscotchA quarter teaspoon of baking soda aerates the hot syrup slightly and lightens the texture. Add it off the heat and stir quickly, as it foams up hard.
- Marking and cuttingScore the slab with an oiled knife while it is still warm and pliable, then break along the lines when cold. The French butterscotch is directed to be cut with shears when cold, which works only if the sheet has been marked and poured thin.
- Dipping the chocolate chipsMelted chocolate for dipping wants to be tempered, or it may set dull and develop a grey bloom. Keep couverture between roughly 88 and 90F after melting, and dip pieces that are fully cold so the sugar does not weep.
Hard candy of this kind belongs to the era when a home cook could reliably buy cheap refined sugar and corn syrup, both of which became household goods in America between roughly 1880 and 1920. Corn syrup in particular changed domestic confectionery: it made crystallisation far easier to control, and books of this period lean on it heavily in place of the older cream of tartar or vinegar tricks, though the vinegar survives here in both butterscotch recipes. Butterscotch itself is generally traced to Yorkshire in the mid-nineteenth century, and the name has been explained in several competing ways — one folk etymology takes "scotch" in the sense of to score or cut, which is exactly what these instructions tell you to do to the cooling slab, while others point to "scorched" or to Scotland. Panocha, from the Spanish for raw or unrefined sugar, had loosened by this date to mean almost any brown-sugar candy.