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Brown Sugar Candy
2 lb. brown sugar 1 C milk Vanilla Chopped walnuts Butter Boil sugar and milk thirteen minutes, take from stove and add butter size of egg, 2 teaspoons vanilla and 1 cup chopped walnuts. Beat until stiff.
Mrs. Kruckman.
This is penuche — brown sugar fudge — and the whole thing hinges on temperature rather than the stated thirteen minutes.
- Use a thermometer, not the clockThirteen minutes assumes a particular pan, burner and volume. Cook to about 236–238F (soft-ball stage); much below that and the candy stays syrupy, much above and it turns dry and crumbly.
- Quantities in modern termsTwo pounds of brown sugar is about 4 1/2 cups, firmly packed. "Butter size of an egg" is roughly 2 oz, or 4 tablespoons.
- Milk scorchesA heavy-bottomed saucepan several times the volume of the mixture, and steady stirring until the sugar dissolves, will keep the milk solids from catching and tasting burnt. Whole milk is the safer choice here, since the added fat helps the texture.
- Add butter off the heat and waitDrop in the butter and vanilla without stirring, then let the syrup cool undisturbed to about 110F before beating. Beating a hot syrup produces large sugar crystals and a gritty candy.
- "Beat until stiff" means until it dullsBeat by hand or with a wooden spoon until the gloss disappears and the mass thickens and begins to hold its shape — usually a few minutes. Stop the moment it stiffens; it sets fast in the pan.
- Nuts and panFold the walnuts in near the end of beating, then spread into a buttered pan (a 9-inch square or larger for this quantity) and score into squares while still warm. Yield is upwards of 2 lb.
- Weather mattersFudge made on a humid day absorbs moisture and refuses to set firmly. Cook one to two degrees higher in damp conditions.
Penuche, sometimes spelled panocha, most likely takes its name from Mexican Spanish panocha, a coarse or unrefined sugar, and the candy is essentially fudge that leans on brown sugar's molasses for flavor instead of chocolate. Boiled sugar candies of this kind became common in American home kitchens in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as cheap refined and semi-refined sugars, bottled vanilla extract and dependable kitchen ranges spread. Recipes like this one, signed with a contributor's name, are the whole point of a community cookbook: members traded formulas that had already proven themselves at suppers and bake sales, and the terse instructions assume the reader has watched somebody else do it. The "butter size of an egg" measurement, common in such books, is a reminder that scales and standardized cups were still optional equipment in many American kitchens.