Caramel
Put one pound of white sugar in an iron kettle, and burn until it is dark red and thick. Remove from the fire and add a little hot water and bottle for use.
A dry caramel taken deliberately dark — closer to what older books call burnt sugar than to a sweet caramel sauce. Two things decide whether it works: how far you let the color go, and how you add the water.
- The hinge: stop at the color, not the clockDry sugar goes from pale amber to acrid in under a minute at the end. "Dark red and thick" is roughly 350-360F — mahogany, faintly smoking, smelling toasted rather than sharp. Pull the pan off the heat a shade before you think it is ready, since the residual heat keeps it darkening.
- The kettleAn iron kettle here is simply a heavy pan that will not scorch. Use a heavy stainless or enameled saucepan, at least three times the volume of the sugar, so the mixture can foam up without going over the side. Avoid nonstick and avoid thin aluminum.
- Melting a pound dryOne pound is about 2 1/4 cups of granulated sugar. Melt it over medium heat without stirring at first; once patches liquefy, push the dry sugar gently into the melt with a heatproof spatula rather than beating it, which encourages lumps.
- Adding the waterThis is the dangerous moment: caramel at 350F meets water and erupts in steam and spatter. Use boiling water, add it a spoonful at a time down the side of the pan with your hand and face clear, and let each addition settle before the next.
- How much water"A little" is left to the cook, and the original phrasing suggests a modest quantity rather than a generous one. Up to about 1 cup of boiling water to the pound will give a pourable syrup; less gives something thick and near-black that you spoon rather than pour.
- What it tastes likeTaken to dark red, this is bittersweet and slightly smoky, not the milky caramel of a modern sundae sauce. A teaspoon or two per dish is plenty, and it is at its best against plain vanilla or over a soda.
- Keeping itBottle warm in a clean jar; sugar at this concentration keeps for months at room temperature. If it crystallizes or stiffens in the neck of the bottle, stand the jar in hot water to loosen it.
Burnt sugar syrup was one of the standing preparations of the soda fountain and the Victorian storeroom, valued as much for color as for flavor — a few drops darkened gravies, soups, gingerbread and commercial spirits long before caramel coloring came in a bottle from a supplier. Its appearance in a book of temperance drinks is telling: On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon belongs to the wave of American recipe collections published around the arrival of national Prohibition, when the fountain syrup, the sundae and the fruit shrub were promoted as the respectable substitutes for the bar. A cook who could make caramel, plain syrup and a few fruit syrups at home had the working stock of a soda fountain, and this recipe is that stock at its most basic — one ingredient, one pan, and a judgment call about color.