Home › The Principles of Cookery › Toffee, Almond
Toffee, Almond
Melt five ounces of fresh butter in a small brass saucepan over a clear fire, and when it is dissolved stir into it a pound of good brown sugar, and let the mixture boil for a quarter of an hour. Have ready prepared two ounces of sweet almonds, blanched, halved, and dried. Throw them into the toffee, and let it boil after they are added until it hardens instantly when dropped into cold water, and breaks between the teeth without sticking to them. When this point is reached, turn the toffee out immediately or it will burn. Pour it upon buttered dishes. Or, blanch an ounce of sweet almonds, divide them into strips, and dry them thoroughly in a cool oven or before the fire. Boil a pound of sugar in half a pint of water till it is dissolved, then throw in an ounce of butter. Boil the toffee until it hardens instantly when dropped into cold water. Pour it on a buttered dish or oiled slab, and add the sliced almonds after the toffee is poured upon the dish. When nearly cold, mark it out in squares with the back of a knife. Time, fifteen to thirty minutes.
A straightforward hard-crack sugar boil, given in two versions: an all-butter brown-sugar toffee with the almonds boiled in, and a plainer water-boiled sugar with almonds strewn on top. Both hinge on the cold-water test rather than the clock.
- The cold-water test is a thermometer reading"Hardens instantly when dropped into cold water, and breaks between the teeth without sticking" is the hard-crack stage, 300-310F (150-155C). A sugar thermometer gets you there more reliably than the drop test, though the drop test is a good confirmation.
- Ignore the stated timesFifteen minutes of boiling in the first version, and "fifteen to thirty minutes" overall, describe one particular pan on one particular fire. Boil until the temperature or the water test says so; the time will vary with the depth of the pan and the heat of the hob.
- The brass saucepanUnlined brass and copper were standard for sugar work because they conduct heat evenly, but bare brass can leach copper and forms verdigris. Use a heavy stainless or copper-lined pan, and choose one at least twice the depth of the syrup, since butter-and-sugar mixtures foam up sharply.
- MeasuresHalf a pint here is an imperial half-pint, 10 fl oz or about 1 1/4 US cups. A pound of sugar is roughly 2 1/4 cups, whether granulated or packed brown.
- Sweet almondsThe qualifier distinguishes them from bitter almonds, which were sold for flavouring in this period and are not sold for eating now. Ordinary supermarket almonds are sweet almonds; blanch them by covering with boiling water for a minute and slipping off the skins, then dry them well, since damp nuts will spit in hot sugar.
- Brown sugar scorchesThe first version has no water at all, so the butter and sugar go straight to a high temperature with nothing to buffer them. Keep the heat moderate, swirl rather than stir once it is boiling, and pour the moment the test passes -- the recipe's warning about burning is not decorative.
- The buttered dishA shallow metal tray or a marble slab, generously buttered or oiled, works better than china. An 8-inch square tin gives a slab something under half an inch thick from these quantities.
- Marking the squaresScore with an oiled knife back when the surface has set but the slab still gives slightly, which is what the recipe's "nearly cold" means. Left until fully cold, it will shatter along its own lines instead of yours.
- Yield and keepingEach version makes a little over a pound of toffee. Store between layers of waxed paper in an airtight tin; the surface goes tacky in humid air if left uncovered.
Toffee -- also spelled toffy and taffy in nineteenth-century books, the words not yet fully separated -- belongs to the great age of cheap sugar in Britain. Duties on sugar were progressively cut through the middle of the century and abolished in 1874, and boiled sweets that had been the work of confectioners moved into domestic kitchens and children's treats. Cassell's gives two recipes here because they are genuinely different sweets: one is a butter-heavy brown sugar toffee, while the water-boiled sugar with almonds strewn on top is closer to the almond "hardbake" that appears in earlier English cookery books. The instruction to test by dropping syrup into cold water long predates the kitchen thermometer, and the vocabulary of thread, soft ball, crack and caramel served as the confectioner's working scale for centuries.