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Caramels
½ cup molasses 1 cup sugar 2½ cups milk Vanilla extract Boil 15 to 20 minutes. Pour in greased tin and cut into squares.
A bare-bones candy formula of the kind that assumed the cook already knew what caramel should look like in the pan. The stated time is the least reliable part of it.
- Ignore the clock, use a thermometerTwo and a half cups of milk against a cup and a half of sugar and molasses is a great deal of water to drive off. Cook to 245-250F (firm-ball) for caramels that hold a square; at a hard simmer this commonly takes 30-45 minutes in a wide pan, not 15 to 20.
- Wide, heavy panA heavy-bottomed saucepan at least 3 quarts, wider than it is tall, so the milk reduces quickly and the sugar does not scorch on a thin base. Stir more or less constantly once it thickens.
- Butter is missingMany caramel recipes of the period add 1-2 tablespoons of butter, which is what gives the chew and keeps the candy from setting hard and grainy. Its absence here may be an omission rather than an intention.
- MolassesUse ordinary unsulphured cooking molasses, not blackstrap, which is bitter and much darker. In Canada, fancy molasses is the closest match.
- Vanilla goes in off the heatThe extract is listed with no quantity and no timing. Half a teaspoon, stirred in after the pan comes off the burner, keeps the flavour from cooking away.
- The tinAn 8-inch square pan, buttered, gives a fairly thin slab, on the order of a third of an inch. Let it set until firm but still warm to the touch before cutting; fully cold caramel resists the knife and cracks rather than slices.
- YieldAbout 3/4 lb of candy, or roughly 36 small squares. Wrap them individually in waxed paper, or they will tend to stick together.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company to promote its Five Roses flour, and was compiled from recipes contributed by users of the flour across Canada. That may account for the telegraphic style here: a contributor who made these caramels often would not have thought to specify a pan size, a quantity of vanilla, or a test for doneness. Milk caramels of this type belong to the late nineteenth-century growth in home candy-making, when cheaper refined sugar and more reliable cook stoves brought confectionery out of the professional shop and into domestic kitchens; molasses, still a common sweetener in Canadian pantries, gave colour and a faint bitterness that plain sugar caramel lacks.