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English Toffee
2 cups brown sugar 4 tablespoons molasses 4 tablespoons water 2 tablespoons butter 3 tablespoons vinegar Mix ingredients in sauce pan. Stir until it boils and cook until brittle when tested in cold water. Pour in greased pan. Cut into squares before cool.
A plain boiled sugar candy that relies entirely on temperature. Everything else in the recipe is incidental; the cold-water test is the whole method.
- The hinge: cook to hard crack"Brittle when tested in cold water" means the hard-crack stage, 300-310F on a candy thermometer. A drop in cold water should shatter between the fingers rather than bending; anything softer sets tacky and pulls at the teeth.
- Pan and volumeUse a heavy-bottomed saucepan at least four times the volume of the syrup. Brown sugar with molasses foams up hard as it approaches 300F, and a small pan will boil over.
- Why the vinegarThe vinegar and molasses both supply acid and invert sugar, which discourages the batch from crystallising into a grainy mass. Do not leave them out, and do not stir once the syrup is boiling steadily.
- Butter quantityTwo tablespoons in two cups of sugar is a lean toffee by modern standards; it will be closer to a hard treacle brittle than to the buttery English toffee sold today. That is what the original intends.
- The panAn 8-inch square metal pan, greased with butter or lined with a silicone mat, gives a slab about a quarter-inch thick. A cold pan sets the candy faster and gives you less time to mark it.
- CuttingScore the surface into squares with an oiled knife when the slab is set but still warm and slightly yielding, roughly five to ten minutes after pouring. Once fully cold it will only break along its own lines.
- Yield and storageAbout a pound of candy, sixty-odd small squares. Wrap in waxed paper and keep airtight; boiled sugar candies draw moisture from humid air and will turn sticky quickly if left open.
Toffee of this sort belongs to a family of British boiled sugar sweets whose names shift by region and century -- taffy, toffy, treacle candy, and in the north of England the bonfire-night sweets made with black treacle. Molasses and brown sugar rather than white were the older and cheaper base, and the splash of vinegar is a common nineteenth-century home-confectioner's trick, appearing in many molasses candy and pulled-taffy recipes to keep the syrup smooth. Placing it under Christmas dinners fits a habit of homemade candy as a holiday product: sugar boiling needed no special equipment beyond a saucepan and a cup of cold water, which put it within easy reach of a household wanting something to hand round or to box up as a gift.