Penoche
3 cups brown sugar 1 cup milk 1 tablespoon butter 1 teaspoon vanilla 1 cup nut-meats Put the sugar and milk into a saucepan and cook to the soft-ball stage, or 236 degrees F. Remove from the fire, add butter and vanilla, and cool without stirring. When it is lukewarm, beat until it is creamy. Stir in the broken nut-meats. Hickory nuts or English walnuts are especially nice. Pour into a buttered pan and when it hardens mark into squares.
A straightforward brown-sugar fudge that lives or dies by two things: an accurate thermometer and the patience to let it cool before beating. Everything else is assembly.
- The hinge: cool undisturbedStirring hot syrup, or beating it before it drops to about 110F, forces large sugar crystals and gives a grainy, gritty candy. Leave the pan absolutely alone until the bottom feels only just warm to the palm, then beat hard until it loses its gloss and thickens.
- Temperature236F is the low end of soft-ball and is what you want here. Calibrate the thermometer in boiling water first; at higher altitudes subtract roughly 2F for every 1,000 feet above sea level.
- Pan choiceUse a heavy saucepan holding at least 2 quarts. Milk and sugar foam up considerably and scorch easily on thin metal; stir until the sugar dissolves, then let it boil without further stirring.
- Brown sugarPeriod brown sugar was generally darker and less uniform than today's light brown. Light brown sugar gives a mild caramel flavor, dark brown a pronounced molasses one; either works, but pack it firmly when measuring.
- NutsHickory nuts are a foraged item now rather than a market one. English walnuts are the easy substitute, and pecans are closer to the hickory flavor. Toasting them for 8 minutes at 350F sharpens the taste considerably.
- Pan and yieldAn 8-inch square pan, buttered, gives pieces roughly three-quarters of an inch thick. The batch weighs on the order of 1 3/4 to 2 pounds and will mark into about 36 squares.
- CuttingScore the surface while the candy is still slightly soft and finish cutting once it has fully set. Fully hardened penuche crumbles rather than cuts.