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Chocolate Caramels
Two and one-half pounds of sugar, three-quarters pound of chocolate, one quarter pound of butter, half a pint of milk or cream.--Mrs. W. C. R.
The proportions are all that is given here, which was normal for candy receipts of the 1870s: any cook who read them was expected to know how caramels were boiled and cut. The quantities work, but the method has to be supplied.
- The hinge: cook to a temperature, not a timeNo time or heat is given; a cook of the period would have judged doneness by dropping a little syrup into cold water. Chocolate caramels are boiled to roughly the firm-ball stage, about 245-250F on a candy thermometer; below that they will not hold a cut, and the higher you go the firmer and harder the finished candy becomes.
- What the chocolate isThree-quarters of a pound of "chocolate" in this book means unsweetened cake chocolate sold in blocks, not chips or eating chocolate. Use unsweetened baking chocolate, chopped; sweetened chocolate would make the finished candy cloying against 2.5 lb of sugar.
- Half a pintOne cup. An American pint is 16 fl oz, so half a pint of milk or cream is 8 fl oz. Cream gives a softer, less grainy caramel and is worth choosing over milk.
- SugarPlain granulated white sugar. Adding a tablespoon or two of corn syrup or a pinch of cream of tartar to the pot is a modern insurance policy against the batch crystallizing, a common failure with all-sugar candy.
- The panUse a heavy saucepan at least four times the volume of the ingredients; a chocolate-and-milk syrup foams high and scorches on thin metal. Stir until the sugar dissolves, then let it boil with minimal disturbance.
- Setting and cuttingPour into a buttered 9x13-inch pan or onto a buttered marble slab to a depth of about half an inch, let cool until firm but not cold, and cut into squares with an oiled knife. Waiting until fully cold makes the cutting a fight.
- YieldAbout 3 to 3.5 lb of finished candy. The batch is large by modern standards; it halves without trouble.
- StorageWrap the squares individually in wax paper, or they will fuse back into a single mass within a day in humid weather.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (first published in 1878, with printings the following year), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from receipts contributed by Virginia housewives, appeared just as chocolate confectionery was becoming a household rather than a professional undertaking in America. Caramels themselves were a mid-nineteenth-century commercial success story, and cheaper block chocolate and the widespread availability of refined white sugar put both principal ingredients within reach of a domestic kitchen. The bare, method-less form of the entry, initialed "Mrs. W. C. R." like hundreds of others in the book, is characteristic: these were notes traded between women who already knew how to boil sugar, and the book preserved the proportions rather than the technique.