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Cream Peppermints
2 cups sugar Pinch of cream of tartar 9 tablespoons water 10 drops oil of peppermint Put the sugar, cream of tartar and water in a granite saucepaл and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Boil ten minutes; remove from fire; add peppermint and beat until the mixture thickens; then drop from a spoon on buttered paper. !
A fondant patty in miniature: sugar syrup boiled, cooled slightly, then beaten until it turns opaque and creamy. The whole thing hinges on cooking the syrup to the right concentration and on when you start beating.
- Boil to a temperature, not a clock"Boil ten minutes" assumes a particular pan and burner. Use a candy thermometer and take the syrup to the soft-ball stage, 238F. Under-cooked syrup will never set; past about 245F the patties turn hard and short.
- Granite saucepanGranite ware is enamelled steel, not stone. Any heavy non-reactive pan works. Avoid cast iron, which can discolour the sugar.
- Stop stirring once it boilsThe recipe has you stir only until the sugar dissolves, and that is deliberate. Stirring a boiling syrup drags crystals down the sides and turns the batch grainy. Wash the pan walls down with a wet pastry brush instead.
- Cream of tartarA pinch, meaning roughly 1/8 teaspoon, inverts part of the sugar and keeps the fondant smooth. Do not increase it or the candy will stay soft and sticky.
- Let it cool before beatingThe instruction to beat straight off the fire is the weak point. Modern fondant practice is to let the syrup fall to about 110F undisturbed, then beat: the crystals form small and the texture is creamy rather than sandy.
- Oil of peppermint, not extractTen drops means true peppermint essential oil, which is considerably stronger than alcohol-based extract. If substituting extract, start with about half a teaspoon and taste, and add it off the heat so the flavour does not flash off.
- Buttered paperParchment or a silicone mat needs no butter. Have it laid out before you start beating; once the mixture thickens you have a minute or two at most, and if it stiffens too soon, warming it gently over hot water may bring it back.
- YieldTwo cups of sugar gives several dozen patties the size of a quarter. They firm up within an hour or so and keep in a tin between layers of waxed paper.
Cream peppermints are the domestic version of a confectioner's fondant patty, and they appear in many American cookbooks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries because they were among the easiest professional candies to reproduce at home: no moulds, no chocolate tempering, no starch trays, just sugar, water and an acid. Peppermint oil was the flavouring of choice partly because it was cheap and stable, and partly because peppermint had long been sold as a digestive, so a mint after dinner carried a faint air of usefulness. Cream of tartar, a byproduct of winemaking, was the standard household tool for keeping boiled sugar from seizing into crystals.