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Seafoam Candy
3 cups light brown sugar 1 cup cold water 1½ tablespoons vinegar.
Boil to hard ball stage, beat whites of 2 eggs and pour in the candy. Beat quite stiff, add nuts and vanilla.
A brown-sugar divinity, written in the shorthand of a cook who already knew how it should look. The whole thing hinges on syrup temperature and on the weather.
- Hard ball means 250-266FUse a candy thermometer and aim for about 255F. Below that the candy never sets and stays a sticky paste; much above it and the mixture seizes before you can spread it.
- Beat the whites firstThe recipe's shorthand assumes it: have two whites whipped to stiff peaks and waiting before the syrup is ready, then pour the hot syrup in a thin steady stream down the side of the bowl while beating.
- A stand mixer earns its keepExpect roughly eight to twelve minutes of hard continuous beating after the syrup is in. By hand that is heavy going, and easier with a second pair of arms.
- The vinegarAn acid added to invert some of the sucrose and keep the finished candy from turning grainy. Cream of tartar does the same job; do not leave it out.
- Light brown sugarOlder brown sugars were not necessarily as uniformly moist as modern packed brown sugar. Measuring it lightly spooned rather than firmly packed is the safer reading of the three cups.
- Know when to stop beatingThe candy is ready when it holds its shape on a spoon and loses its gloss. Drop it by teaspoonfuls onto waxed paper at that moment; another minute of beating and it will crumble in the bowl.
- Do not make it on a wet dayDivinity-type candies pull moisture from humid air and refuse to set. Choose a dry day, or expect a soft sticky result no matter how accurate the thermometer.
- Quantities not givenAssume about a cup of chopped walnuts or pecans and a teaspoon of vanilla, both stirred in at the very end. Three cups of sugar makes a large batch, likely three to four dozen small drops.
Seafoam is the brown-sugar sibling of divinity, and the two spread through North American home cookbooks in the early twentieth century as cheap refined sugar reached ordinary kitchens. The name is usually taken to describe the finished texture rather than any ingredient: a pale, airy, slightly crumbly mass. The technique is the same one that produces Italian meringue, hot syrup beaten into egg whites, and it belongs to a period when a home cook was expected to judge syrup by dropping a bead of it into cold water. The Five Roses book, issued by a Canadian flour milling company and assembled largely from recipes contributed by housewives, carries a section of these sugar confections, which were among the cheapest forms of holiday luxury.