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Tablets, Sugar, Flavoured
Clarify a pound of sugar. To do this, break it up into small pieces, and pour over it a quarter of a pint of water which has been beaten up with a tea-spoonful of white of egg. Let it stand until the sugar is dissolved, then put it on the fire, and when it boils throw in another quarter of a pint of water, and let it boil up again without stirring. Draw the pan to the side of the fire, let the syrup settle, and carefully remove the scum. In order to avoid waste, put this scum upon an inverted sieve; a small portion of clear syrup will drain from it, which may be put with the rest. Flavour the syrup with three drops of oil of cinnamon, the grated peel of two lemons, or a quarter of an ounce of ground ginger. Return it to the preserving-pan, and boil it to candy height (See SUGAR BOLLING) or until it rises high in the pan, and has sufficient firmness to make a thread when taken between the thumb and finger (which have been previously dipped in cold water). Pour it on a large flat dish or well-oiled slab, and mark it quickly into squares, into which it may be broken when cold. If liked, essence of peppermint, or essence of cloves may be used for flavouring.
A boiled sugar candy of the plainest sort, cut into squares while still soft. The whole thing hinges on how far you boil the syrup, and the original gives two tests that do not quite agree.
- Skip the clarifyingThe egg-white-and-water step exists because Victorian loaf sugar carried impurities that had to be coagulated and skimmed off. Modern granulated sugar is already pure; start with 1 lb (450 g) sugar and the recipe's full half-pint of water (about 285 ml) and go straight to boiling.
- Quarter of a pintAn imperial quarter-pint is 5 fl oz, about 142 ml, so the two additions together come to roughly 285 ml — a little over a cup. Almost all of it boils away again.
- "Candy height" and the thread testThe two tests given are not the same stage. A syrup that pulls a thread between wet fingers is only around 230-240F (soft ball at best); a candy that sets hard enough to snap into squares needs hard crack, 300-310F (150-155C). Use a thermometer and take it to 300F.
- Do not stirOnce the sugar is dissolved and boiling, leave it entirely alone and wash any crystals off the pan sides with a wet brush. A single stray crystal will seed the whole pan and you get an opaque, sandy mass instead of clear candy.
- Oil of cinnamonStill sold, and still ferociously strong — three drops for a pound of sugar is correct, not a misprint. Oil of cloves and peppermint oil are the same order of strength; ordinary alcohol-based extracts are far weaker and you will need about a teaspoon.
- The lemon and ginger versionsGrated lemon peel and ground ginger both add solids, which encourage crystallisation and can scorch at hard-crack temperatures. Add them off the heat, at the last moment before pouring, or use lemon oil instead of zest.
- Pan and slabA "preserving-pan" is a wide, heavy pan, typically copper or brass in this period — any heavy-bottomed saucepan with room for the syrup to rise well up the sides as it boils. For the slab, use marble or a rimmed baking sheet, oiled with a neutral oil, not butter.
- Working quicklyAt 300F the syrup sets within a minute or two of pouring. Score the squares with an oiled knife while it is still pliable; leave it thirty seconds too long and it will shatter along its own lines rather than yours.
- YieldAbout 1 lb of finished candy; the number of one-inch squares depends on how thickly you pour it. Store airtight with a desiccant or in a dry cupboard — boiled sugar goes tacky in humid air within a day.
Flavoured sugar tablets belong to the long tradition of the confectioner as near-relative of the apothecary: medieval and early modern kitchens made "sugar plate" and lozenges of manus christi, and cinnamon, clove, ginger and peppermint were all valued as digestives before they were thought of as sweets. That inheritance shows in the ingredient list here, which reads like a druggist's shelf. By the time Cassell's was compiled in the late nineteenth century, cheap refined sugar had turned what was once a luxury medicine into a domestic sweet a cook could turn out in an afternoon, and boiling sugar to a stated degree was treated as a technique to be learned rather than a single dish. The clarifying-with-egg-white instruction is the fossil in the recipe: it was genuinely necessary with the sugars of the period and is often said to have become superfluous not long after publication.