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EVERTON TOFFEE (another way)
Get one pound of treacle, the same quantity of moist sugar, and half a pound of butter. Put them into a saucepan large enough to allow of fast boiling over a clear fire. Put in the butter first, and rub it well over the bottom of the saucepan; then add the treacle and sugar, stirring together gently with a knife. After the mixture has boiled for about ten minutes, ascertain if it is done in the following way. Have ready a basin of cold water, and drop a little of the toffee into it from the point of a knife. If it is sufficiently done, when you take it from the water it will be quite crisp. Now prepare a large shallow tin pan or dish, rubbed all over with butter to prevent its adhering, and into this pour the toffee from the saucepan to get cold, when it can be easily removed. To keep it good, it should be excluded from the air.
A straightforward three-ingredient boiled sugar confection. The only thing standing between success and a sticky failure is how far you take the boil.
- The hinge: cook to hard crackThe cold-water test given here is the real instruction, and it is looking for the hard-crack stage, 300-310F (149-154C). A sugar thermometer does the same job with less guesswork; the drop should shatter, not bend, when lifted out.
- Ten minutes is not the timingBoiling time depends entirely on pan width and burner output, and can run to 20 minutes or more on a modern hob. Ignore the clock and test repeatedly from about the eight-minute mark.
- TreacleBritish black treacle or dark molasses both work; avoid blackstrap, which is harsh and bitter at this concentration. Golden syrup gives a paler, milder toffee and is not what is meant here.
- Moist sugarVictorian "moist sugar" is unrefined light or dark brown sugar. Modern soft brown sugar is the closest match.
- Pan sizeThe instruction to use a pan "large enough to allow of fast boiling" is not padding. Butter, sugar and treacle foam up hard; use a heavy pan at least three times the volume of the ingredients.
- The tinAny large shallow rimmed tin will do, buttered as directed or lined with baking parchment. Pour without scraping the last of the pan, which is likely to be grainy.
- Breaking and storingScore the surface with an oiled knife as it firms, then snap when fully cold. "Excluded from the air" means an airtight tin with parchment between the layers; humidity turns the surface tacky within hours.
- YieldAbout 2 lb (900 g) of toffee, enough for a large tin's worth of shards.
Everton toffee takes its name from Everton, then a village on the hill above Liverpool and now a district of the city. The sweet is traditionally traced to a local seller, Molly Bushell, said to have begun making it in the 1750s from a doctor's recipe; the story is much repeated but thinly documented. What is certain is that by the nineteenth century "Everton toffee" was a recognised commercial line sold well beyond Liverpool. The association was strong enough that Everton Football Club has been nicknamed the Toffees since its early years. The recipe itself belongs to a broad family of treacle-and-butter boiled sweets, whose spread in ordinary households is often linked to the growing availability of cheap West Indian molasses and refined sugar.