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Butter-Scotch Candy
2 T boiling water 1/2 C butter Boil ingredients until when tried in cold water the mixture will become brittle. Turn into a well-buttered pan, and when slightly cool mark into squares with sharp knife.
Mrs. C. R. Bulkley.
A three-line candy recipe with a printing problem: the ingredient list is incomplete. Butterscotch is boiled sugar, and no sugar appears here.
- The missing ingredientAs printed, this is water and butter, which will never set brittle. Comparable butterscotch recipes of the period use roughly two cups of brown sugar (some add a tablespoon of vinegar or a spoonful of molasses) to a half cup of butter. Any modern butterscotch recipe will supply the proportion; the amount cannot be recovered from this page.
- AbbreviationsT is tablespoon, C is cup. Half a cup of butter is one stick, 4 oz.
- The cold-water test"Brittle" is the hard-crack stage, 300-310F on a candy thermometer. A drop into cold water should form threads that snap rather than bend. Below that the candy stays chewy and will weep in humid weather.
- Watch the butterWith this much butter to sugar the mixture may separate and look curdled as it boils. Stir it back together over the heat rather than pulling it off; it re-emulsifies as the water cooks out.
- Scoring the squaresThe timing here is the hinge. Mark while the surface has just set but the slab still gives under a knife tip, a few minutes after pouring. Wait longer and it shatters at random instead of along the lines.
- The panA parchment-lined quarter sheet pan releases more reliably than the buttered pan called for. Pour to about a quarter inch.
- Yield and keepingOn the conjectural proportions suggested above, a batch would make something like a pound, perhaps forty small squares. Store airtight with wax paper between layers; boiled sugar candy can turn tacky quickly in a humid kitchen.
Butterscotch appears in British confectionery writing from the middle of the nineteenth century, with Doncaster in Yorkshire traditionally credited as its home town. The origin of the "scotch" is disputed: it is often said to come from "to scotch," meaning to score or cut, which would fit the instruction here to mark the slab into squares before it hardens, but a connection with Scotland, or with "scorched," has also been proposed, and none of the explanations is settled. Recipes contributed under members' names, as this one is, were characteristic of subscription and fundraising cookbooks of the period, which were printed cheaply and proofread lightly - which is how a butterscotch recipe with no sugar in it could reach the press.