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Toffee
Melt three ounces of fresh butter in a small brass saucepan over a clear, bright fire. As soon as it is dissolved, stir into it one pound of good brown sugar, and keep stirring until it is done enough. In order to ascertain when this point is reached, let a cup of cold water be placed close at hand, and keep dropping a little of the toffee into it. When the toffee thus dropped hardens immediately, and breaks between the teeth without sticking to them, it is done, and must be poured out at once or it will burn. The flavour of this toffee may be pleasantly varied by stirring into it a tea-spoonful of slightly moistened powdered ginger, or the grated rind of a small lemon. Pour the toffee upon a buttered dish, and put it in a cool place to set. Time to boil, fifteen to twenty-five minutes. Probable cost, this quantity, 8d.
A two-ingredient butterscotch toffee that stands or falls on one thing: how far you take the sugar. Everything else is detail.
- The hinge: hard-crack stageThe cold-water test described here is the hard-crack stage, 300-310F (149-154C) on a sugar thermometer. Pull it earlier and the toffee stays tacky and chewy; go much past 310F and the brown sugar's molasses scorches bitter within seconds.
- The panA small brass saucepan was the traditional vessel for sugar work in a Victorian kitchen. Use a heavy-bottomed stainless steel pan of two to three times the volume of the mixture; it bubbles up as it boils. Avoid unlined brass or copper for cooking generally, and never use a thin pan here, which will scorch the sugar on the base.
- Heat levelA "clear, bright fire" means steady medium heat, not the fiercest setting. The stated 15 to 25 minutes assumes that; on a modern gas ring at full blast, one pound of sugar can reach hard-crack in well under ten minutes, so trust the thermometer and the water test rather than the clock.
- The sugar'Good brown sugar' here means a moist, unrefined, molasses-bearing sugar rather than white. Modern light brown sugar works but gives a paler, milder result; a dark muscovado will give the strongest molasses flavour. One pound is roughly 2 1/4 packed cups.
- Butter and separationThree ounces is about 6 tablespoons (85 g). Stir continuously and keep the mixture moving off the bottom; if the butter looks as though it is splitting out as an oily layer, take the pan off the heat and beat it back in before returning it.
- FlavouringsAdd the ginger or lemon rind off the heat, once the pan is pulled, rather than during the boil. Lemon zest held at 300F turns bitter, and ginger stirred in at the end keeps its heat.
- The dish and the pouringPour into a buttered shallow tin, ideally 8 x 8 inches or a small Swiss roll tin, for a slab roughly a third of an inch thick. Score it into squares with an oiled knife after five to ten minutes, while it is still pliable; once fully set it will only shatter.
- Yield and keepingThe ingredients weigh 19 oz before boiling, so this makes a little over a pound of toffee, enough for a good-sized tin of pieces. Store it airtight and away from damp, or it will go sticky within a day or two in a humid kitchen.
- Cleaning upDo not attempt to scrape the hardened residue out of the pan. Fill it with water and bring it to the boil; the sugar dissolves away.
Toffee of this kind is simply boiled sugar and butter taken to the point of brittleness, a sweet that spread through British kitchens in the nineteenth century as refined and unrefined sugars became cheap enough for domestic sweet-making. The word itself appears in English in the early 1800s, often said to be a variant of "taffy", though the origin is obscure; the two names came to be used differently, with "taffy" in American usage denoting a pulled, chewy sweet and toffee the hard slab. Cassell's records a probable cost of 8d. for the batch, which places it squarely among the economical household treats the book is fond of: no eggs, no cream, no expensive flavouring, and no special skill beyond judging the sugar. The cold-water test given here predates the domestic sugar thermometer and was the standard method for every stage of confectionery, from the thread to the caramel.