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Candies and Candy Making: Cream
French Cream. - Place in a clean saucepan 2 cupfuls of white sugar, cupful of hot water. Boil 8 minutes without stirring. When done it should fall in threads from the stirrer, and when rubbed against the side of the pan should be of a creamy consistency. A few drops in cold water should roll into a soft ball between the fingers. It is better to remove from the fire CANDIES AND CANDY MAKING too soon than to cook too much, as if necessary it can be returned to the fire and the cooking continued.
When done pour into a bowl and beat with an egg beater. When cool add any desired flavoring matter.
This is a fondant which may be molded or cut into any desired shape, tinted and colored as desired, or made into bonbons by molding into various shapes and decorating with almonds or other nuts pressed into the top or side. Place the pan containing the cream in hot water or on a warm soapstone while molding it to prevent its getting too cold.
Or place in a clean saucepan 2 cupfuls of granulated sugar, ½ cupful of milk. Bring to a boil over a slow fire and boil for 5 minutes.
This is a basic fondant, the foundation of nearly every filled or molded candy in a book of this period. The whole thing turns on stopping the syrup at the soft-ball stage, which the text describes in three different ways because home cooks of the 1900s had no thermometer.
- The hinge: soft-ball, not minutesIgnore the 8-minute timing and work to 238F on a candy thermometer. Boiling time varies with pan width and burner output, and the cold-water test the recipe describes -- a few drops rolling into a soft ball between the fingers -- is the same endpoint.
- Water quantityThe amount of hot water has lost its fraction in this printing. A standard fondant of this era is 2 cups sugar to about 1/2 cup water; more water only means a longer boil.
- The milk variationThe second version, which gives the milk quantity as an unreadable figure, is a milk-based fondant. Take it to the same 238F rather than trusting the 5-minute figure, and stir at the start so the milk does not scorch.
- Do not stir the sugar syrupThe instruction to boil without stirring is not fussiness. Agitating the hot syrup starts crystallization early and gives a grainy, coarse fondant. Wash any sugar crystals off the pan sides with a wet brush instead.
- Beating and coolingAn egg beater works, but a stand mixer with the paddle or a stiff wooden spoon is easier. Beat until the syrup turns opaque white and stiffens; it happens rather suddenly, and the mass will then need kneading by hand until smooth.
- "Warm soapstone"A soapstone slab was the period's heat reservoir, kept by the range. A bowl set over barely warm water, or a few seconds in the microwave at low power, keeps fondant pliable for molding.
- Flavor after coolingAdd extracts only once the mass has cooled, as the recipe says. Volatile flavorings, especially vanilla and citrus oils, boil off if stirred into hot syrup.
- RipeningFondant is noticeably smoother if wrapped airtight and left a day before use. Freshly beaten, it is often slightly sandy.
- YieldTwo cups of sugar gives roughly a pound of fondant, enough for 30 to 40 small bonbons.
Fondant -- from the French fondre, to melt -- was the commercial confectioner's staple, and its arrival in domestic manuals like this one marks the moment when factory-style candy work moved into the home kitchen. Books of the 1890s and 1900s taught it as a mother recipe: one batch of "French cream" could be tinted, flavored, rolled around a nut or a candied cherry, or later dipped in chocolate, so a single afternoon's boiling supplied a whole box of assorted bonbons. What made this practical for households is often said to have been cheap refined cane sugar, granulated and consistent, along with the spread of reliable ranges that could hold a slow, steady boil. The elaborate cold-water and thread tests here stand in for the thermometer most kitchens did not yet own.