Walnut Kisses
1 cup brown sugar 1/2 cup granulated sugar 1/4 cup cold water White of 1 egg Shelled walnuts 1. Boil sugars and water together until a few drops harden when dropped into cold water. 2. Beat white of egg stiff. 3. Pour the sugar very slowly upon the white of egg, beating all the time. 4. Butter a platter. 5. Drop by tablespoonfuls on the platter. 6. Put a half walnut on each little mound or "kiss." -The Mary Frances Cook Book. • • •
This is a small-batch divinity, and the whole thing turns on the temperature of the syrup. Everything else is straightforward.
- The cold-water test, in degrees"a few drops harden when dropped into cold water" suggests somewhere in the firm- to hard-ball range, very roughly 245-265F on a modern candy thermometer; the recipe itself gives no number, so this is an inference from the wording. Undercooked, the kisses stay sticky and spread on the platter; cooked much harder, they set before you can drop them.
- Pour thin and steadyThe syrup goes into the beaten white in a slow thread down the side of the bowl, never in a dollop, or it will cook the white into threads instead of building a meringue. Keep beating continuously from the first drop until the mass holds its shape.
- You will want a mixerBy hand this is several minutes of hard beating with hot syrup in one hand. A stand mixer on medium-high makes it routine; the candy is ready when it loses its gloss and a spoonful holds a peak without slumping.
- Humidity decides the dayDivinity-type candies refuse to set on a damp or rainy day, since the meringue draws water from the air. Make them when the kitchen is dry, and cook the syrup a couple of degrees higher if the weather is muggy.
- Butter a platterAny cool flat surface works; parchment or a silicone mat is easier than the buttered platter and does not add a greasy edge. Drop the mounds while the mixture is still warm and workable, then press the walnut half in at once so it adheres.
- WalnutsPlain shelled walnut halves, about 20-24 of them, one per kiss. Toasting them briefly first sharpens the flavor against all that sugar, though the original does not.
- Yield and keepingRoughly 20 to 24 kisses from this quantity. They firm up in an hour at room temperature and keep about a week in a tin; refrigeration makes them weep.
The attribution at the foot of the page is to The Mary Frances Cook Book, Jane Eayre Fryer's 1912 children's cookery story in which a little girl is taught to cook by the talking kitchen utensils "Aunty Rolling Pin," "Sauce Pot" and the rest. "Kisses" was a broad nineteenth-century term for small dropped confections built on beaten egg white, from the crisp baked meringue to this cooked-syrup sort; the name divinity for the latter type appears in American sources from around the 1910s. The mixture of brown and granulated sugar is what gives these their tan color and faint caramel edge, and the walnut pressed on top is doing double duty as decoration and as the only garnish a child cook would need.