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Vanilla Caramels
2 cups sugar 1/2 cup corn sirup 1/2 cup milk 1 teaspoon vanilla 4 tablespoons butter 1 cup cream or condensed milk Cook the ingredients, except the vanilla, to the firm-ball stage, or 246 degrees F. Remove from the fire, add the vanilla and pour into a buttered pan. When it is cold, turn it out of the pan and cut it into squares.
A plain milk caramel of the sort that appears in every American candy chapter of the 1920s and 30s. It works as written, provided you watch the thermometer rather than the clock.
- The hinge: 246F, and no guessingCaramels are defined almost entirely by final temperature. Two or three degrees low gives a sticky mass that will not hold a cut edge; a few degrees high gives something closer to toffee. Use a calibrated candy thermometer, and subtract about 1F for every 500 feet of elevation above sea level.
- Corn sirupLight corn syrup. Its job is to keep the sugar from crystallising into a grainy candy, so do not substitute an equal weight of sugar.
- Condensed milkIn a book of this period "condensed milk" normally means the sweetened canned product. Using it in place of the cup of cream will make a noticeably sweeter, faster-browning candy; unsweetened evaporated milk behaves more like the cream option.
- Pan and stirringUse a heavy saucepan at least three times the volume of the mixture, since milk and sugar foam up sharply. Stir more or less constantly over medium heat once it comes to the boil, scraping the bottom, or the milk solids will scorch and thread the finished candy with bitter flecks.
- Adding the vanilla off the heatThis is deliberate. Vanilla extract is alcohol-based and its aroma is volatile, so much of the flavour would be lost if it went in during the boil.
- Pan size and cuttingAn 8-inch square pan gives a slab of something over half an inch deep, which is about right. Let it set at room temperature rather than in the refrigerator, then cut with a buttered or lightly oiled knife, pressing straight down.
- Yield and keepingAbout 1 1/2 pounds, or 60 to 64 one-inch caramels. Wrap each in waxed paper or cellophane; unwrapped, they will slump together and pick up moisture in humid weather.
Caramels of this type belong to the era of cheap canned milk and commercial glucose syrup, both of which became widely available in American kitchens in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and made a chewy, non-crystalline milk candy easy for a home cook to get right. The word caramel reached English through French, where it denoted burnt or browned sugar; its earlier origin is disputed. The confection here is only lightly caramelised: much of its colour and flavour comes from the browning of milk proteins and lactose during the boil, which is consistent with the recipe's full cup of cream or condensed milk rather than water. Candy-making chapters were a fixture of household cookbooks in the 1920s, when boxed chocolates and caramels were a standard gift. The precise Fahrenheit figure is itself a period marker: home candy thermometers had become affordable, and cookbooks were shifting from the old cold-water tests to numbers a reader could verify -- this recipe gives both.