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Vinegar Candy
2 cups sugar 1/2 cup vinegar 2 tablespoons butter Put butter into kettle; when melted, add sugar and vinegar. Stir until sugar is dissolved, afterwards occasionally. Boil until, when tried in cold water, mixture will become brittle. Turn on a buttered platter to cool. Pull, and cut same as Molasses Candy.
A three-ingredient pulled candy that depends entirely on reading the sugar stage correctly. The vinegar is there for flavour and as an acid that helps keep the boiled syrup from crystallizing.
- The hinge: cook to hard crack"Brittle" in cold water corresponds to what modern cooks call the hard-crack stage, roughly 300-310F. Below that the candy stays tacky and will not hold a pull; carried much further it begins to caramelize and turn bitter. A thermometer is easier to read than the water test, but confirm with the water test at the end.
- KettleMeans a heavy saucepan, not a stockpot. Use one with a thick base and at least 2-quart capacity, since the syrup climbs as it boils.
- StirringThe original says to stir until the sugar dissolves and occasionally thereafter. Modern practice is to stop stirring once the syrup boils, since agitating a boiling sugar syrup can seed crystals and give a grainy candy. Wash stray crystals down the pan sides with a wet brush.
- Which vinegarCider or plain white vinegar at 5 percent acidity. Wine and balsamic vinegars carry sugars and colour that will darken and shift the flavour.
- Cooling before pullingButter the platter generously and let the sheet cool until you can handle the edges, then fold them inward. Pull with buttered hands, not floured, and work quickly; once the candy stiffens and loses its gloss it will crack rather than stretch.
- CuttingPull until the ribbon turns pale and satiny, twist it into a rope about half an inch thick, and cut into inch lengths with buttered kitchen shears while still pliable.
- WeatherBoiled sugar candy takes up moisture from the air. On a humid day it will go sticky within hours; wrap the pieces individually in waxed paper and keep them airtight.
- YieldRoughly a pound of candy, perhaps 40 to 50 small pieces.
Vinegar candy belongs to the American pulled-candy tradition that also produced molasses taffy and taffy-pulling parties, a nineteenth-century social occasion in which the cooling sugar was worked in pairs by hand. It is a thrift sweet: sugar, a little butter, and a splash of vinegar, with no need for molasses, nuts or flavouring extracts. The acid does real work as well as flavouring, since it inverts part of the sucrose during boiling and gives a candy that pulls smooth instead of turning sandy.