Plain Taffy
2 cupfuls of white sugar, 1/2 cupful of water, 1 tablespoonful of vinegar, a piece of butter the size of an egg.
Flavor with vanilla just before pouring out. Boil without stirring until crisp when tried in water. When cool enough to handle pull with your finger-tips until white. The longer the taffy is pulled the better it will be.
A classic pulled sugar candy that needs no thermometer if you trust the cold-water test, though a thermometer removes the guesswork. The whole recipe hinges on cooking the syrup high enough and then not disturbing it.
- "A piece of butter the size of an egg"Roughly 2 ounces, or 4 tablespoons. Butter in this quantity keeps the pulled candy from setting glassy and hard.
- "Crisp when tried in water"This points to the hard-crack stage: a drop of syrup in cold water sets into a thread that snaps rather than bending. On a candy thermometer that is about 300-310F. Cooked much lower, the taffy will be softer and stickier, though softer pulled taffies are made that way on purpose.
- Do not stirOnce the sugar has dissolved, leave the pan alone. Stirring throws sugar crystals up the sides and seeds the whole batch, which turns the finished candy grainy. Wash any crystals down the inside of the pan with a wet brush instead.
- The vinegar is doing workThe acid inverts part of the sucrose, which is what keeps the syrup smooth and pullable. Lemon juice or a pinch of cream of tartar does the same job; do not omit it.
- Flavor off the heatVanilla added while the syrup is boiling will mostly evaporate. Stir it in after the pan comes off the burner, just before pouring.
- Pouring outA buttered marble slab is ideal; a buttered rimmed baking sheet works. Let the edges cool and fold them inward with a buttered scraper so the mass cools evenly rather than setting hard at the rim.
- HandlingButter your hands generously. Sugar at this temperature causes serious burns, so wait until the mass is genuinely comfortable to touch before pulling, and keep children away from the pan and the slab.
- Why pulling whitens itEach fold traps air, and the many fine bubbles scatter light, taking the candy from amber to opaque white. Pull until the rope stiffens and resists; the recipe's own advice is that the longer it is pulled, the better.
- WeatherPulled sugar draws moisture from the air. On a humid day the finished taffy turns sticky within hours, so cut it with buttered scissors and wrap the pieces individually in waxed paper.
- YieldAbout 1 pound of finished candy.
Pulled taffy belongs to the era when candy-making was a social event rather than a purchase. "Taffy pulls" were a familiar American parlour amusement through the nineteenth century: a batch was boiled, poured out, divided among the guests, and pulled in pairs. The ingredient list reflects a moment when refined white sugar had become cheap enough for ordinary households to boil away two cupfuls on an evening's entertainment, something that would have been far less likely a century earlier. "Taffy" and "toffee" are closely related words of obscure origin, and which came first is not settled; in practice British toffee tended toward a hard, dark, butter-rich slab while American taffy became the pale, aerated, pulled sweet described here.