Divinity
6 tablespoons hot water 2 cups brown sugar White of 1 egg 1 ounce walnut meats 1 ounce chopped raisins Boil together the first two ingredients until a little of the mixture forms a soft ball when dropped into cold water. Beat the white of the eggs as stiff as possible; add walnuts and raisins and pour the syrup over the eggs, beating constantly. When the mixture will stand alone drop from a teaspoon upon paraffin paper.
A small-batch divinity made with brown sugar rather than white, which puts it closer to what other books call sea foam. The whole thing hinges on syrup temperature and on the weather.
- Soft ball is 235–240°FUse a candy thermometer rather than the cold-water test alone. Note that most modern divinity recipes take the syrup considerably higher, to 250–260°F; at soft ball this batch will set softer and stickier, closer to a fudge-like drop than the dry, matte candy sold as divinity today.
- Humidity decides everythingDivinity will not set on a damp or rainy day — the sugar draws moisture from the air and the candy stays tacky indefinitely. Make it when the air is dry, and cook the syrup a few degrees higher if the day is at all humid.
- One egg white is a hard beatThe original assumes beating by hand, whether with a whisk or a rotary beater. A stand mixer with the whisk attachment is far easier: whip the white to stiff peaks, then pour the hot syrup down the side of the bowl in a thin stream with the machine running, and keep beating five to ten minutes until the mass loses its gloss and holds its shape.
- Fold the fruit and nuts in lastThe instruction to add walnuts and raisins to the white before the syrup is unusual; they weigh the foam down and get scalded. Better results come from beating the syrup into the plain white, then folding in the nuts and raisins at the end, just before dropping.
- Ounces of nutsOne ounce of walnut meats is roughly a scant quarter cup chopped; one ounce of raisins is nearer three tablespoons, as they pack denser. These are weights, not volumes, and the amounts are modest for two cups of sugar.
- Paraffin paperThis means waxed paper. Parchment or a silicone mat works as well and releases more cleanly.
- Raw egg whiteThe hot syrup heats the white but does not reliably pasteurize it. Pasteurized egg white, liquid or in the shell, removes the question without changing the result.
- YieldTwo dozen or more teaspoon-sized drops, depending how generously you scoop. Work quickly once the mixture holds its shape, as it stiffens in the bowl; a little hot water beaten in will loosen it if it sets too fast.
Divinity belongs to the family of American boiled-sugar candies built on beaten egg white — the same technique as Italian meringue, only cooked hard enough to crystallize. The name appears in American cookbooks and candy pamphlets in the early twentieth century. Versions made with brown sugar or maple, as here, are often called sea foam, and the darker sugar gives a caramel note the white-sugar version lacks.