Toffee, Everton
INGREDIENTS.- 1 lb. of powdered loaf sugar, 1 teacupful of water, 1/4 lb. of butter, 6 drops of essence of lemon. AVERAGE COST, 8d.
Put the water and sugar into a brass pan, and beat the butter to a cream. When the sugar is dissolved, add the butter, and keep stirring the mixture over the fire until it sets when a little is poured on to a buttered dish; and, just before the toffee is done, add the essence of lemon. Butter a dish or tin, pour on the mixture, and when cool, it will easily separate from the dish.
Butter-Scotch, an excellent thing for coughs, is made with brown, instead of white sugar, omitting the water, and fla TOMATO PICKLE.
TOMATO SAUCE. voured with 1/2 oz. of powdered ginger. It gar, 1 dessertspoonful of Chili vinegar (a is made in the same manner as toffee.
TIME.-18 to 35 minutes.
A straightforward hard-crack boiled sugar sweet, though the original leans on the cold-water test rather than a thermometer. Note also that the text is garbled: a few lines of a neighbouring tomato pickle recipe have been swept into the last sentence and can be ignored.
- The hinge: temperature"until it sets when a little is poured on to a buttered dish" is a cold-set test, and for a toffee meant to snap it points to somewhere around the hard-crack stage, roughly 300-310F (149-154C). A sugar thermometer removes much of the guesswork; boiled short of that, the toffee stays tacky and chewy rather than snapping.
- Loaf sugar, powderedLoaf sugar was refined sugar sold in a cone and broken up at home; "powdered" here means crushed fine, not modern icing sugar. Use ordinary granulated white sugar.
- A teacupfulVictorian teacups ran smaller than modern mugs "~ reckon on about 6 fl oz (175 ml). The exact figure hardly matters, since the water all boils off; it only helps the sugar dissolve evenly at the start.
- The brass panBrass and copper were the standard confectioner's metals for their even heat. A heavy stainless or copper saucepan does the same job; avoid thin pans, which scorch sugar at these temperatures. Do not use an unlined brass or copper pan for acidic mixtures.
- Essence of lemonThis was an alcoholic tincture of lemon oil, stronger than most supermarket extracts. Six drops of a modern lemon extract will be faint; taste-adjust, or use two or three drops of lemon oil. Add it off the heat or at the very last moment, as the volatiles flash off.
- Butter quantities4 oz butter to 1 lb sugar is a rich toffee that can separate if stirred hard while boiling. Beat it to a cream as directed, add it once the sugar is dissolved, and stir steadily but gently.
- The butterscotch variantBrown sugar, no water, and 1/2 oz powdered ginger "~ that is a lot of ginger, close to two heaped tablespoons, and gives a fiercely warming sweet. Boiling sugar dry with butter alone needs low heat and constant attention to avoid burning. The claim that it is "an excellent thing for coughs" is period folk belief, not medicine.
- Timing and yieldThe stated 18 to 35 minutes is a wide range, and on a modern hob the boil will probably fall towards the shorter end. One pound of sugar with 4 oz of butter yields roughly 1 1/4 lb of toffee; a shallow 8-inch tin is about right. Score it into squares while still warm rather than trying to cut it cold.
- StorageWrap pieces individually or layer with baking parchment in an airtight tin. Buttery toffee turns sticky quickly in humid air.
Everton toffee takes its name from the Liverpool district, where it was being sold by the early nineteenth century "~ the trade is traditionally associated with a Molly Bushell, said to have set up a toffee shop there in the 1750s, though the story is repeated more often than it is documented. By Mrs Beeton's day the name had become generic for a hard, buttery, lemon-scented toffee sold in slabs and broken with a small hammer, and the recipe's costing at eightpence marks it as an affordable domestic treat rather than a confectioner's luxury. The pairing with butterscotch in the same entry is telling: both are boiled-sugar sweets of the industrial north, and the ginger version's reputation as a cough remedy belongs to a long tradition of medicinal confectionery, in which sugar and a warming spice did duty as a lozenge.