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Mary Elizabeth's Butter Scotch
6 tablespoons Nectar drip molasses. 5 tablespoons granulated sugar. 2 tablespoons water. 1 tablespoon butter.
Cook until cracks in cold water. Drop in rounds on greased marble or wax paper.
A very small batch of hard candy, written in the shorthand of a cook who assumed you knew the cold-water test. The whole thing hinges on pulling it off the heat at the right stage.
- "Cracks in cold water"This is the hard-crack stage: a drop of syrup spooned into cold water sets into brittle threads that snap rather than bend. On a thermometer that is 300-310F. A few degrees under and the rounds stay tacky and chewy; much over and the sugar scorches bitter.
- Nectar drip molassesApparently a proprietary molasses sold under this name in the period; the grade is not certain. Use unsulphured light molasses; blackstrap is far more bitter and will dominate the butter.
- Scale of the batchSix tablespoons of molasses is about three-eighths of a cup and five of sugar a little under a third, so this is a very small quantity, likely no more than a dozen small drops. Use the smallest heavy saucepan you own or the syrup will be too shallow to read on a thermometer.
- Do not stir after it boilsStir only until the sugar dissolves, then leave it. Agitating a boiling sugar syrup encourages crystals, and the candy turns grainy instead of glassy.
- Marble or wax paperA marble slab pulls heat out fast and sets the rounds quickly; a chilled baking sheet lined with parchment does the same job. Grease it lightly regardless, and work fast, as the syrup stiffens within a minute of coming off the heat.
- Butter goes in at the endButter -- The recipe lists it with the rest, and that is how period butterscotch was normally made. If you prefer, stirring it in at the end gives a smoother finish, but adding it at the start is not a fault.
- Weather mattersHard candy draws moisture from the air. Made on a humid day it will go sticky within hours; store the rounds in an airtight tin with the pieces separated by wax paper.
Butterscotch as a hard boiled sweet is often associated with Yorkshire, and with Doncaster in particular, from the mid-nineteenth century. The 'scotch' element is unsettled: it is commonly explained as 'scotching' or scoring the cooled sheet into squares, though this is a traditional explanation rather than a documented one, and 'scorch' has also been proposed. The name attached here suggests Mary Elizabeth's, the candy shops and tea rooms known in New York and other Eastern cities in the early twentieth century, though the connection cannot be confirmed from the recipe itself. Attaching a shop's or a hostess's name to a recipe was a common device in period cookbooks; the recipe itself is plain molasses candy, cheap, quick and made from four things any household kept on hand.