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Plain Chocolate Caramels
2 1/2 cups of sugar, 3/4 a cup of pure corn syrup, 1/2 a cup of butter, 1/8 a teaspoonful of cream of tartar, 2 1/2 cups of whole milk (not skimmed), 2 1/2 squares of Baker's Premium No. 1 Chocolate, 1 teaspoonful of vanilla extract. Put the sugar, pure corn syrup, butter, cream of tartar and one cup of the milk over the fire, stir constantly, and when the mass has boiled a few moments, gradually stir in the rest of the milk. Do not let the mixture stop boiling while the milk is being added. Stir every few moments and cook to 248 degree F., or until, when tested in cold water, a hard ball may be formed; add the chocolate and vanilla and beat them thoroughly through the candy, then turn it into two bread pans. When nearly cold cut into squares.
A straightforward milk caramel with unsweetened chocolate stirred in at the end. The temperature is given, which makes this one of the easier period candy recipes to reproduce faithfully.
- The hinge: 248°FThe recipe is right to name a number. Modern tables put 248°F at the top of the firm-ball range, though this recipe calls the cold-water test a "hard ball"; period stage names were not standardised. A few degrees low gives caramels that slump at room temperature; a few degrees high gives something closer to toffee. Use a calibrated thermometer and check it in boiling water first.
- Baker's Premium No. 1This was Walter Baker's plain unsweetened chocolate, sold in cakes scored into one-ounce squares. Use 2 1/2 oz unsweetened baking chocolate — not bittersweet, which would add sugar and cocoa butter the formula does not account for.
- Pure corn syrupLight corn syrup, as sold today. Its purpose is to interfere with crystal formation, along with the cream of tartar; do not substitute honey or a sugar syrup of your own.
- Adding the milk graduallyThe instruction not to let the mixture stop boiling is the reason this works. Cold milk poured in at once drops the temperature, and the pan then scorches on the bottom while it climbs back. Warm the second cup and a half and add it in a thin stream.
- Pan and stirringUse a heavy pan considerably larger than seems necessary — milk caramel foams up hard. A silicone spatula reaches the corners better than a spoon, and the bottom is where sugar and milk solids catch.
- Beat the chocolate in brieflyBeat the chocolate in -- add chocolate and vanilla off the heat. The recipe says to beat them thoroughly through the candy; stir until uniform, but no longer than needed, since prolonged beating at this temperature can encourage graining and a fudge-like set rather than a chew.
- "Two bread pans"Bread pans of the period varied in size, so the depth of the slab will vary with what you use; two loaf pans of roughly 8x4 inches, buttered or lined with parchment, give a slab somewhere around half an inch deep. Cut while still slightly warm and firm, as the recipe's "when nearly cold" suggests; fully cold caramel resists the knife.
- Yield and keepingRoughly 2 lb of candy; the number of one-inch squares depends on the pans used. Wrap the pieces individually in wax paper, or they will tend to stick together.
Walter Baker & Co. of Dorchester, Massachusetts — a chocolate mill whose business the firm itself dated to 1780, though milling on the site began earlier under John Hannon and James Baker in the 1760s, and one of the oldest food businesses in the United States — issued a long series of small recipe booklets, of which Choice Recipes is the best known. The point of them was to keep a plain, unsweetened baking chocolate useful in a kitchen increasingly offered ready-made sweets, so the pamphlets lean heavily on cakes, frostings, hot beverages and candy. The insistence here on "pure corn syrup" and "whole milk (not skimmed)" fits the era's preoccupation with adulterated groceries in the years around the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, when brand names and the word "pure" carried real commercial weight. Giving 248°F alongside the older cold-water test suggests a period when confectionery was beginning to move from craft judgment towards measurement — though the retention of the cold-water alternative implies a thermometer could not yet be assumed in every kitchen.