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Caramel, or Sugar for Sweets, Etc
Put one pound of sugar into a preserving-pan with half a pint of cold water. Let it stand three or four minutes, then place it on the fire, and let it boil, skimming and stirring it constantly. It will be first a syrup, then begin to bubble and look white, when, if it is intended for caramel, it must have the juice of a lemon stirred in with it, or it will turn to sugar again. Dip a stick into it, then plunge it into cold water, and when the sugar which drops from the stick snaps like glass, it is ready. It must be poured out instantly. If it is to be used for sugar spinning, the pan must be placed in another of cold water. Have the moulds ready oiled, and throw the sugar over in threads with a fork or spoon.
This is boiled sugar work rather than what we now call caramel — the aim is clear glass-hard sugar for glazing and spinning, not browned sauce. The hinge is the water test: sugar that snaps like glass is at hard crack, and a few seconds past that it colours and then burns.
- QuantitiesOne pound of sugar is about 2¼ cups granulated. Half an imperial pint of water is 10 fl oz, or 1¼ US cups — a generous ratio that simply means a longer boil to drive the water off.
- The preserving-panA heavy, wide, unlined copper or thick stainless pan with a good spout. Depth matters: boiling sugar climbs, and a shallow pan will spit over the sides.
- Read the temperature, not the clockThe cold-water test given here corresponds to hard crack, 300–310F on a sugar thermometer. Below that the sugar stays sticky; above 320F it begins to darken toward true caramel.
- StirringStir only until the sugar has dissolved, then stop. Modern practice is to leave it alone and wash stray crystals down from the sides with a wet brush; constant stirring after the syrup is clear invites the whole pan to grain.
- Why the lemon juiceAcid inverts part of the sucrose, which is what prevents the mass "turning to sugar again" — the recrystallisation the recipe warns of. A little cream of tartar or glucose syrup does the same job.
- Stopping the cookThe pan of cold water is the brake. Sugar holds enough heat to go on rising for a while off the flame, so have the water bath, the oiled moulds and the fork standing ready before you start.
- SpinningLet the syrup cool until it trails a fine thread from a lifted fork, then flick it back and forth over an oiled rolling pin, ladle or wire form. Work in a dry room; spun sugar collapses within hours in humid air.
- Yield and useA pound of sugar will glaze a good many small fruits or choux, or make a spun-sugar veil. Any surplus in the pan can be dissolved again with a little water rather than chipped out.
Boiled sugar was a foundation skill: the same syrup, taken to different degrees, gave the Victorian cook her glacé fruits, nougat, barley sugar, croquembouche cement and the spun-sugar veils thrown over ice puddings. The stick-and-cold-water test described here belongs to the older confectioner's ladder of degrees — thread, ball, crack, caramel — which professional kitchens worked by long before the sugar thermometer became a domestic item, and the vocabulary survives in modern candy charts. Note that "caramel" in this entry means the clear, glass-hard stage rather than a browned sauce. Spun sugar was well established in European confectionery long before this dictionary appeared.