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ALMOND CANDY (or HARDBAKE)
Boil one pound of sugar and half a pint of water until it becomes brittle when dropped in cold water; then add a quarter of a pound of almonds blanched and split, the juice of half a lemon, and one ounce of butter. Boil until the candy hardens at once in the water. Pour it out on a well-oiled dish. When cold, it may be taken off the plate and kept for use in a tin box. Time, half an hour. Probable cost, 7d.
A straightforward hard-crack sugar boil with almonds — what a modern cook would call almond toffee or praline brittle. The only real difficulty is reading the sugar correctly, since the original gives no temperature.
- The hinge: what "brittle in cold water" meansThis is the hard-crack stage, 300–310F (149–154C) on a sugar thermometer. A drop in cold water should snap cleanly between the fingers rather than bending; if it forms a pliable thread you are still at soft crack and the candy will stay tacky.
- Half a pintCassell's is an English book, so this is an imperial half-pint, 10 fl oz, or about 1¼ US cups. Any amount in that range works — the water is only there to dissolve the sugar and boils away entirely.
- Why the lemon juiceAcid inverts a portion of the sucrose as it boils, which discourages the syrup from crystallising into a grainy mass. Add it with the almonds and butter rather than at the start, and resist stirring the syrup once it is clear.
- Two stages of boilingAdding cold almonds and butter drops the temperature sharply, which is why the recipe tells you to boil again until it hardens "at once" in water. Bring it back to full hard crack before pouring, or the finished sheet will be chewy.
- The dishAn oiled marble slab or a baking sheet lined with oiled foil or a silicone mat gives a thinner, snappier result than a plate. Pour and spread quickly; the mass sets in a couple of minutes.
- AlmondsBlanched and split means skinned and halved along the natural seam. Toasting them lightly first improves the flavour considerably and costs nothing in texture.
- Time and yieldHalf an hour is generous — the boil itself is nearer fifteen minutes on a modern hob. A pound of sugar with a quarter-pound of almonds makes roughly 1¼ lb of candy, enough to fill a large baking sheet in a thin sheet.
- Keeping itThe tin box matters. Hard-crack sugar is hygroscopic and will go sticky within a day in a humid kitchen; airtight storage with the pieces separated by parchment keeps it crisp for a week or two.
Hardbake was one of the standard cheap sweets of nineteenth-century England, sold by street confectioners and at fairs alongside brandy balls and toffee — Henry Mayhew's surveys of London street sellers in the 1850s record it among their stock in trade. The name simply describes the product: sugar boiled hard, with almonds set into it, broken into shards. It belongs to the same family as French nougatine and praline, though the English version is plainer, relying on butter and a squeeze of lemon. Its appearance in Cassell's, with a costing of sevenpence, marks it as a domestic economy.