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Mexican Nougat
4½ C granulated sugar 1½ C brown sugar ¼ lb. butter 1 pt. cream 2/3 C Karo syrup Mix in a big aluminum kettle and set in larger pan of hot water. Put on stove and stir until no grains of sugar are seen on spoon. As soon as thoroughly dissolved, set inner kettle on stove and boil until candy forms a firm ball in cold water. Let cool until you can bear hand on bottom of kettle, then beat. Have ready, cut fine. 3 rings of candied pineapple 1/2 lb. candied cherries 2 C black walnuts Add fruit and nuts as you begin to beat. When creamy, pour into pan to set. Slice when cold. This makes a five-pound loaf and is delicious. 2 C sugar 1/2 C water ½ C Karo syrup Mrs. R. F. Wright.
A large-batch fondant-type candy of the sort church cookbooks favored for bazaars and gift boxes. Nothing here is difficult, but the sugar work is unforgiving and one of the printed quantities is plainly a misprint.
- The butter figure is a typo"14 lb. butter" against 6 cups of sugar and a pint of cream is impossible; it is almost certainly 1/4 lb, a standard quarter-pound stick. Read it as 4 oz / 113 g.
- The trailing three lines are not part of this recipeThe trailing three lines -- "2 C sugar, 1/2 C water, 1/2 C Karo syrup" -- do not belong with the candy above; they read as a stray fragment picked up in typesetting. Ignore them here.
- Firm ball, in numbersFirm-ball stage is 244-248F (118-120C) on a candy thermometer. Cold-water testing works, but with a batch this size a thermometer is the difference between a sliceable loaf and a sticky one.
- Why the hot-water bath firstSetting the inner kettle in a larger pan of hot water dissolves every sugar crystal gently before direct heat begins. Skipping it is how the finished candy turns grainy; wash any stray crystals off the pan sides with a wet brush as well.
- "Until you can bear hand on bottom"That is roughly 110-115F (43-46C). Beating hot syrup gives coarse crystals and a sandy texture; letting it cool undisturbed to this point is the hinge of the whole recipe.
- KaroCorn syrup, still sold under the same name; it was marketed in both light and dark, and light is the usual choice for a pale candy. It is present as an interfering agent to keep crystals fine, so do not substitute honey or maple syrup.
- Black walnutsNot English walnuts. Black walnuts are stronger, almost resinous, and were commonly gathered rather than bought in the rural Midwest. English walnuts or pecans will work but give a much milder candy.
- Kettle and armSix cups of sugar plus a pint of cream will more than double in volume at the boil; use a heavy pot of at least 6 quarts. Beating five pounds of candy by hand is genuine work, and a stand mixer with the paddle handles it if the bowl can take the heat.
- YieldAbout five pounds, as stated. Pour into a buttered 9x13 pan, cool completely, then slice into bars or squares; it keeps well wrapped for a couple of weeks.
"Mexican" attached to a great many American candies around 1900 without much geographic warrant, usually signaling brown sugar and nuts; the family it belongs to is penuche, from Spanish panocha, raw or unrefined sugar. What sets this version apart is the candied fruit worked in at the beating stage, producing a firm loaf meant to be sliced rather than cut into squares, closer in form to the fruited nougat loaves sold at holiday time than to a pan of fudge. Karo syrup, named in the recipe, was a comparatively new commercial product in the early decades of the century and shows up constantly in church and club cookbooks of this period, since corn syrup helped keep such candies from graining. Black walnuts were gathered wild and cracked at home across much of the Midwest, and hoarded for exactly this sort of Christmas confection.