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Chocolate Caramel
One-fourth cake Baker's chocolate, 2 cups granulated sugar, 1 cup sweet milk, 1 cup molasses, butter size of an egg. Boil all together till a drop will harden in wa-. ter, then beat until it will grain; season with one tsp. vanilla; turn into greased pans and mark in squares when nearly cool.
— Contributed
A grained molasses-chocolate candy — closer to what we would now call fudge than to a chewy caramel. Two details in the original decide whether it works: how far you boil it, and when you start beating.
- The chocolateA cake of Baker's chocolate of this period is usually reckoned at 8 oz (half a pound), so one-fourth cake is about 2 oz. It was unsweetened baking chocolate, which is still sold; do not substitute semisweet without cutting the sugar.
- Butter size of an eggAbout 2 oz, or 4 tablespoons, roughly a quarter cup. Nineteenth-century books used the egg as a volume gauge often, but it is an approximation rather than a fixed measure.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh whole milk, specified to distinguish it from the sour milk used in soda-risen baking. Whole milk, not skim — the fat matters to the texture.
- MolassesUse unsulphured cane molasses, not blackstrap, which is bitter and will fight the chocolate. Molasses adds invert sugar, which is part of why this candy stays tender rather than turning gritty.
- "Till a drop will harden in water"The cold-water test: the syrup should reach roughly the firm-to-hard-ball stage, which on a modern thermometer falls somewhere in the 240s-250sF, though the original gives no temperature. A drop pressed between the fingers under cold water should hold a firm shape that still yields; if it snaps brittle you have boiled it too far and the candy will be hard.
- Cool before beatingThis is the hinge. Beating a boiling-hot syrup gives coarse, sandy crystals. Let it stand off the heat until the bottom of the pan is warm rather than hot — about 110-115F — then beat until it loses gloss and thickens. Stir in the vanilla at that point, not while it boils, or the flavor cooks off.
- Pan and scorchingMilk, sugar and molasses together scorch readily. Use a heavy saucepan at least three times the volume of the mixture, stir until the sugar dissolves, and keep the heat moderate once it comes to a boil.
- Yield and cuttingMakes something on the order of a pound and three-quarters, enough for an 8-inch square pan buttered generously. Score into squares while the surface is still slightly soft; once fully set it may crumble at the cut rather than break cleanly.
Baker's chocolate, produced at Dorchester, Massachusetts and dating its business to 1780, was through much of the nineteenth century a common American baking chocolate, sold in cakes — which is why so many recipes of this era measure it by the fraction of a cake rather than by weight. The word "caramel" in American candy usage of the period covered a broad family of boiled milk-and-sugar squares, chewy or grained, and did not yet carry the narrow modern sense of a soft chewy toffee; a beaten, fudge-textured chocolate square could be called a caramel without confusing anyone. Molasses here does double duty as flavor and as sweetening, and was generally the cheaper of the two, though the gap with refined granulated sugar narrowed over the century. The bare "Contributed" at the end is common in compiled subscription and society cookbooks assembled from contributors' handwritten cards.