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Cream Candy
1 teaspoon cream of tartar 1 teaspoon vanilla Cook sugar, water and cream of tartar until brittle when tried in cold water; add vanilla; pour on to greased platter or marble. Pull as soon as it can be handled.
A pulled sugar candy of the simplest kind: boiled syrup, acid to keep it from graining, then worked by hand until it turns opaque and satiny. The whole thing hangs on the temperature of the syrup and on pulling it while it is still hot enough to move.
- ProportionsThe sugar and water quantities are not stated in the text as given here, so the ratio cannot be recovered with confidence. Pulled candies of this period generally use a heavy syrup — on the order of three parts sugar to one part water by volume — but treat that as context rather than a conversion of this particular recipe.
- "Brittle when tried in cold water"This points to the hard-crack range, roughly 300-310F on a candy thermometer, though the recipe itself gives no temperature. A drop spooned into cold water should shatter between the fingers rather than bend; around 280F it will still be pliable and the candy is likelier to stay sticky.
- Cream of tartarIt is there to invert part of the sucrose so the batch does not crystallize into a grainy mass. A teaspoon is a substantial dose; do not increase it, or the candy will stay soft and refuse to set.
- Do not stir once it boilsStir only until the sugar dissolves. After that, wash any crystals down from the pan sides with a wet pastry brush and leave it alone until it reaches temperature.
- The pouring surfaceA marble slab is ideal because it pulls heat out fast and evenly. Failing that, use a heavy rimmed sheet pan or a large platter, oiled with a neutral oil rather than butter, which can scorch and taste burnt at these temperatures.
- Adding the vanillaPour it over the syrup off the heat and let the residual motion carry it in, as the recipe's order implies. Vanilla is volatile at hard-crack temperature, so some of the flavour added while the pan is still on the burner will be lost.
- PullingWork the edges toward the centre with an oiled scraper until the mass holds together, then pull with buttered or oiled hands. Several minutes of folding and stretching turns it from clear amber to opaque white; stop when it stiffens and starts to hold its ridges, then rope it out and cut with oiled scissors.
- WeatherSugar candy pulls badly on a humid day — it picks up moisture from the air and goes tacky. Store the cut pieces in an airtight tin, layered with waxed paper.
Lowney's Cook Book was issued by the Walter M. Lowney Company of Boston, a chocolate manufacturer, and like many house cookbooks of the early 1900s it surrounds its confectionery with everyday household cookery. Pulled white candy of this type — sometimes sold as cream candy, sometimes as pulled taffy or, in the American South, as pull candy for holiday gatherings — was common domestic confectionery before packaged sweets became cheap, and the technique is the same one commercial confectioners used on a hook fixed to the wall. Pulling folds air into the cooling sugar, and that aeration is a large part of what turns a clear brittle into an opaque, short-textured candy; the "cream" in the name is often read as a reference to that texture, though the cream of tartar in the pan is an equally likely source. Cream of tartar as an anti-graining agent was well understood by this date and appears in many printed pulled-candy formulas of the period.