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Candies and Candy Making: Taffy
TAFFY AND MOLASSES CANDY FOR CANDY PULLS Taffy is a simple candy, which may be made of either granulated, lightor dark-brown sugar or molasses. Or both sugar and molasses, with the addition of butter and vinegar, lemon juice or other flavoring substance, as desired. The ingredients may be boiled together, or the butter may be added when the sirup is nearly done. Lemon juice or other flavoring matter should not be added until the boiling is nearly finished, as otherwise the flavor will be partly lost. Taffy is a good candy for children to make, as it is simple and easily handled. It may also be worked into various designs, twisted, braided, formed into horseshoes, baskets, and the like.
Two or more strands of different colors may be braided together. Baskets in different shapes may be formed by winding strands around the bottom or outside of cups or other dishes, which should be buttered on the outside, adding a suitable handle and setting the whole away to cool. When cold it may be easily removed.
Candy canes may be rolled and twisted on a sheet of waxed paper; or strips of party-colored taffy may be twisted or braided and cut into sticks with scissors. The work must be done quickly as soon as the candy is cool enough to bear the hands, as after it sets it cannot be worked to advantage. When taffy is poured from the kettle use only the quantity that will run freely. Keep the scrapings by themselves, as if they are added to the candy they may cause it to harden and grain.
Molasses Taffy.-Boil in a buttered kettle for 3 hours over a slow fire, or until the sirup ceases to boil, 1 quart of Porto Rico molasses and pound of light-brown sugar. Stir frequently to prevent burning or boiling over. When nearly done stir in the juice of a large lemon. When it hardens in water pour into buttered pans.
Or boil over a slow fire to the ball 1 quart of Porto Rico molasses and 1 gill of cold water. Now stir in 1 tablespoonful of butter, 1 teaspoonful of brown sugar. Boil until it hardens in water and pour in a buttered pan to cool. Or boil together 1 cupful of molasses, 1 cupful of sugar, butter the size of an egg, until it will harden in cold water. Cool in a buttered pan.
Everton Taffy. - To make this celebrated taffy extract the juice of a large lemon and grate the rind. Mix 1½ pounds of coffee sugar, 34 ounces of butter, 14 cupfuls of water, and the grated lemon rind. Boil together over a quick fire, stirring constantly until it becomes hard and brittle in cold water. Remove from the fire, stir in the lemon juice and pour in buttered tins to cool. - Buttercups.
Make any desired quantity of taffy and pour out about 4 inch deep to cool on a smooth buttered surface. Warm a similar quantity of stiff fondant, and work it near the fire until it is creamy and soft. Pull the taffy as soon as it will bear the hands until it is white, stretch it out in broad, flat strips, lay a roll of fondant in the center of each strip, roll the fondant in the taffy and cut the strips crosswise with a sharp scissors to any desired length.
These are boiled-sugar candies judged entirely by the cold-water test, so the useful modernisation is a thermometer and a clear idea of which stage each variant wants.
- Read the water test as temperaturesThe book gives none, but taffy meant for pulling is usually taken to the soft-crack stage, around 270-290F, where a drizzle in cold water forms threads that bend before they snap. Everton taffy, described as "hard and brittle in cold water," corresponds to hard-crack, about 300-310F.
- Porto Rico molassesA dark but not bitter cane molasses, roughly what is sold now as full-flavour or dark molasses. Blackstrap is too bitter and too high in ash; it scorches and gives a harsh candy.
- Coffee sugarA coarse-crystal sugar once sold for sweetening coffee. Ordinary granulated sugar behaves the same in a boiled syrup.
- Gills, eggs and kettlesA gill is half a cup. "Butter the size of an egg" is about 2 ounces, or 4 tablespoons. The "buttered kettle" is a heavy saucepan, buttered around the upper sides to check the syrup boiling over.
- The three-hour molasses boilThree hours over a slow fire reflects the slower, less controllable heat of the period's ranges. On a modern burner in a heavy pan the same quantity will come to the pulling stage considerably sooner; go by the thermometer, not the clock.
- Why the scrapings are kept backThe recipe says to keep what clings to the kettle by itself rather than stirring it into the poured batch. Those scrapings carry crystallised sugar, and seed crystals will turn a smooth taffy grainy and short.
- Acid and flavouring lastAdding the lemon juice at the end preserves the aromatics that would otherwise boil away over a long cook; any inversion of sugar from acid added this late is slight.
- PullingLet the slab cool on a buttered surface until it can be handled, then butter the hands well. The candy is still hot enough to burn when it is soft enough to work, so move briskly.
- Ambiguous quantitiesSeveral figures in the Everton and molasses proportions have lost their fractions and cannot be reconstructed with confidence. As a working guide, a classic Everton toffee runs about 1½ lb sugar to 3 oz butter and roughly 1¼ cups water; the buttercup taffy is poured about ¼ inch deep.
Everton toffee takes its name from Everton, now a district of Liverpool, and is traditionally credited to Molly Bushell, who is said to have sold it there in the late eighteenth century; the attribution is repeated in Victorian cookery writing more often than it is documented. By the time this book appeared, "Everton taffy" had become a generic English and American term for a hard, buttery, lemon-scented toffee. The molasses versions belong to a different line altogether: cane molasses was the cheap sweetener of the American household, and the candy pull was a standing form of nineteenth-century domestic entertainment, a party built around the fact that hot sugar has to be worked by many hands at once and aerates into something pale and chewy while it is worked.