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Everton Toffee
Put one pound of brown sugar and one tea-cupful of cold water into a pan well rubbed with good fresh butter. Set it over a slow fire, and boil until the sugar has become a smooth, thick syrup, then stir into it half a pound of butter, and boil for half an hour. When sufficiently boiled, it may be tested by dropping some on a plate, and if it dries hard and can easily be removed, the toffee is ready for flavouring. For this purpose, add twenty or thirty drops of essence of lemon. Pour the toffee into a wide, well-buttered dish. If liked, vinegar may be substituted for the water, then the lemon may be omitted.
A straightforward hard toffee of sugar, water and a great deal of butter. The only real difficulty is judging the finish, and the original gives you the correct test for it.
- The hinge is the cold-water test, not the clockThe hinge is the plate test, not the clock -- "boil for half an hour" depends entirely on your pan and burner. Work to temperature instead: 295-310F (146-154C) on a sugar thermometer, or the book's own test — a drop on a cold plate that sets hard and lifts cleanly.
- Quantities in modern termsOne pound of brown sugar is about 450g, roughly 2 1/4 cups packed; a teacupful of water is usually reckoned at about a quarter-pint, some 140-175ml. The half pound of butter is 225g, which is a very high proportion and tends to give a softer, chewy-brittle toffee rather than a glassy one.
- Brown sugarVictorian brown sugar was less refined and less strongly molassed than today's dark brown. Light brown or demerara gives the closer flavour; dark muscovado will taste treacly and scorch more readily.
- Essence of lemonThis was an alcoholic tincture of lemon peel oil, and much weaker than pure lemon oil; strengths varied, so compare cautiously with a modern extract. Twenty to thirty drops of a current extract is about 1/4 teaspoon, which is ample; with true lemon oil use two or three drops.
- Why vinegar works as a substituteThe acid inverts part of the sucrose, which discourages the batch from crystallising into a grainy mass. A tablespoon of cider or white vinegar made up to the same liquid volume with water does the job without the sharpness the original implies.
- Pan and heatUse a heavy pan at least three times the depth of the mixture — butter and sugar climb sharply when the water has gone. Stir only as much as is needed to work in the butter, and wipe crystals from the sides with a wet brush.
- Setting and breakingA buttered 8x8 inch tin or a rimmed tray gives a slab about 1/2 inch thick. Score it into squares while still warm but no longer fluid; once cold it will only shatter.
- YieldAbout 1 lb 8 oz (680g) of finished toffee, roughly 40 pieces. It keeps a fortnight or so in an airtight tin, wrapped or layered with waxed paper, and turns sticky in humid air.
Everton toffee takes its name from Everton, now a district of Liverpool, and the trade is traditionally traced to Molly Bushell, who is said to have sold toffee there from a cottage in the mid-eighteenth century; the shop and its successors traded on the name for well over a century, and the association is durable enough that Everton Football Club's supporters are still called the Toffees. By the time Cassell's was compiled, "Everton toffee" was widely used for a hard butter toffee boiled to the crack, sold by weight from confectioners' jars and made at home in quantity for children. Sugar boiling was the standard teaching exercise for judging heat by eye and hand, in an age before a thermometer was ordinary kitchen equipment, and the plate test given here was the whole of a cook's instrumentation.