Nougat
White of 1 egg 2 tablespoons cold water 1 teaspoon vanilla Confectioners' sugar 2 pounds chopped nuts Beat the egg to a stiff froth; add the water and stir in enough sugar to make a stiff paste. Turn out on a molding board well dusted with confectioners' sugar, and work the nuts into the paste. Roll out to the thickness of one half inch; cut into strips a half inch wide and an inch and a half long and put on waxed paper to dry.
MOLASSES CANDY No. 1 1/2 cup molasses 1½ cups sugar 1/2 cup boiling water Pinch of soda 1½ tablespoons vinegar 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar 1/4 cup butter Bring the molasses, sugar, water and vinegar to a boil and add the cream of tartar. Boil until a little of the mixture becomes brittle when dropped in cold water. When nearly done add butter and soda and stir constantly. Pour into buttered tins; mark off in squares and set aside to harden; or cool slightly and pull, buttering the hands first and adding a few drops of flavoring if desired. Pull until the candy is light; roll into sticks and set aside to cool. MOLASSES CANDY No. 2 2 cups molasses 1 cup sugar 1/2 cup vinegar Butter size of egg
This page runs three confections together: an uncooked nougat bound with raw egg white, and two molasses candies, the second of which breaks off mid-ingredient list. The nougat is the problem.
- Why the nougat failsThe egg white is never cooked. It is beaten raw, bound with sugar and nuts, and then set out on waxed paper to dry at room temperature, so nothing in the process reaches a temperature that would kill Salmonella. Air-drying concentrates sugar but does not pasteurise; the squares are then eaten over days. Use a current recipe if you want this sort of sweet.
- Not nougat as most cooks mean itTorrone and French nougat de Montélimar are built on a hot sugar-and-honey syrup poured into beaten whites, which cooks them. What is described here is closer to an uncooked marzipan or fondant paste — quicker, and without the step that made the older method reasonably safe.
- The sugar quantity is open-ended"Confectioners' sugar" appears with no amount at all; the cook is told only to add enough for a stiff paste. Against one egg white and two tablespoons of water that could be a good deal of sugar, and there is no way to reconstruct the intended quantity from the text.
- Two pounds of nuts to one egg whiteThat is an extreme ratio; the white and water together come to only about 60 ml of liquid. Either the paste was meant to be very dry and crumbly, or the nut figure may be a printing error for a smaller quantity.
- Molding boardSimply a work surface, often a pastry board. A dusted countertop or a large sheet of parchment does the same job.
- The molasses candiesMolasses Candy No. 1 is a straightforward hard-crack boil: "brittle when dropped in cold water" is roughly 300–310F on a thermometer. The soda added at the end reacts with the acid in the molasses and vinegar to lighten the texture, which is why the mixture foams up. No. 2 is cut off after the butter and cannot be followed.
- YieldThe nougat as printed, with two pounds of nuts, would spread over roughly a half-sheet pan at half an inch thick and give well over a hundred pieces of the size specified.
Loose-leaf cook books like Mrs. Fryer's, sold as ring binders so a household could add clippings and its own cards, circulated in America in the 1910s and 1920s, and their candy sections reflect a period when home confectionery was both a domestic economy and a fundraising trade. Molasses candy belongs to the older, thriftier end of that tradition: molasses was generally cheaper than refined sugar through much of the nineteenth century, and pulled molasses taffy was the centrepiece of the taffy pull, a social evening usually associated with rural New England and the mid-Atlantic. The nougat here shows the opposite impulse - an uncooked shortcut standing in for a European confection that properly requires a sugar thermometer and a hot syrup, offered to a cook who might not own either.