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Candies and Candy Making: English
English Walnut Creams. - Mold French cream in any desired size and place half an English walnut meat on the top or on either side.
Walnut Creams. - Boil to the hard snap stage 1 cupful of grated chocolate, 1 cupful of brown sugar, 1 cupful of molasses, cupful of sweet milk. When it hardens on being dropped in water stir in butter the size of an egg, 1 cupful of chopped walnuts, or add, in place of milk, pure cream.
Or boil together to the hard snap cupfuls of granulated sugar, 3 tablespoonfuls of glucose, 1 cupful of boiling water. Now add a cupful of cream, cupful of butter, and stir until done; before removing from the fire add 2 cupfuls of finely chopped hickory nuts, stir thoroughly, and pour out to cool. Other nut caramels can be prepared from the same recipe.
BONBONS To prepare bonbons it is necessary to have suitable lead molds oiled with the oil of sweet almonds, or starch prints of various shapes and sizes.
These are filled by means of a suitable funnel with sirup in the state known as the blow.
To test the sugar, dip the skimmer, strike it against the sides of the pan, and blow through the holes. If small bubbles and gleams of light may be seen, it is in the right condition. Add a few drops of any desired flavoring matter, and if coloring matter is desired add the color just as the sugar is taken from the fire. If the bonbons are to be white, let the sugar cool a little, and stir it in the pan until it grains and shines on the surface.
Allow the molds to cool, and let stand two or three days. As soon as the molds are cold remove the bonbons on waxed paper, and let stand two or three days to dry.
Three nut-caramel variations followed by a set of directions for cast bonbons. The caramels are recognizable work; the bonbon method depends on equipment no one should now put food into, and the printed quantities have lost several of their fractions.
- The lead moldsBonbon syrup poured hot into lead molds takes up lead, and the contact is direct. There is no exposure level here that is acceptable. For cast or molded fondant bonbons, use a current recipe rather than adapting this one.
- Missing fractionsSeveral quantities in this text have lost their fractions in printing: "cupful of sweet milk," "cupfuls of granulated sugar," "cupful of butter." The sugar figure in particular is unrecoverable, since the ratio of sugar to water and cream determines whether the batch is a caramel or a brittle. Do not guess at them; work from a recipe with intact numbers.
- "Hard snap"An older name for what is now called hard crack, roughly 300-310F on a thermometer. The cold-water test described here, where the drop hardens rather than flattening, is the same check by another route.
- "The blow"A confectioner's degree at about 230-235F, below the ball stages, named for exactly the test given: syrup at that density will form bubbles when air is forced through the holes of the skimmer. The older trade scale ran thread, pearl, blow, feather, ball, crack, caramel.
- Butter the size of an eggAbout 2 ounces, or 4 tablespoons.
- GlucoseCommercial glucose syrup, sold to candy makers of the period. Light corn syrup fills the same role: it is an interfering sugar that keeps the batch from crystallizing into a grainy mass.
- Grated chocolateUnsweetened block chocolate. Modern unsweetened baking chocolate is the equivalent; sweet or semisweet chocolate will throw the sugar balance well off.
- French creamFondant, the cooked-and-worked sugar paste that underlies most filled and molded candies of the era. English walnut creams are simply fondant shaped and pressed with a walnut half, so the whole first recipe rests on a preparation not given here.
- Hickory nutsShagbark hickory was a gathered nut, common in the eastern United States and almost never sold now. Pecans are the closest relative in flavor and texture and are what a modern batch would use.
The distinction the first line draws, between an "English walnut" and a plain "walnut," was a live one in American kitchens around 1900: Juglans regia, the pale Persian nut reaching the country through English trade and then grown in California, versus the native black walnut, darker, oilier and far harder to crack. A recipe that wanted neat halves for decoration specified English. The bonbon directions belong to a different world from the caramels above them, the world of the professional confectioner, where syrup was cast into impressions struck in trays of dry starch or into cast metal plates and left to set.