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Marshmallow Candy
Three cups of sugar, 1 cup cream or milk, butter size of walnut, pinch of cream of tartar. Boil until soft ball is formed in water; 1/4 lb. marshmallows, 1 cup shredded cocoanut, 1/4 tsp. vanilla. MRS. CLIFFORD BRYANT.
A fudge in all but name: a boiled sugar-and-cream base with marshmallows melted in at the end for a softer, chewier set. The original assumes you know the finishing steps, so most of the work here is filling in what is left unsaid.
- The hinge: everything after the boil is off the heatMarshmallows, coconut and vanilla go in once the syrup has come off the burner, not while it is still boiling. Added to a boiling syrup they scorch and the sugar keeps climbing past the soft-ball stage, giving a hard, grainy candy.
- Soft ball, in numbersThe cold-water test corresponds to 235-240F on a candy thermometer. Test in fresh cold water each time if you are working by eye; water warmed by earlier tests will not set the syrup properly and the reading becomes unreliable.
- Butter the size of a walnutAbout 1 oz, or 2 tablespoons. In a candy of this type the butter is for texture and to discourage sticking, so the amount is forgiving.
- Cream or milkEither works, but cream gives a smoother set and is far less likely to catch. With whole milk, use a heavy pan and stir more or less constantly once it thickens.
- A quarter pound of marshmallowsFour ounces: roughly 16 standard marshmallows or a little over 2 cups of the miniature ones. Marshmallows of the period were probably denser than today's highly aerated commercial ones; the modern equivalent by weight is close enough.
- CocoanutShredded coconut of the period was commonly sold unsweetened. Sweetened flake will make an already sweet candy sweeter; unsweetened desiccated is nearer the original, and a tablespoon or two of the cream held back will keep it from drying the mixture.
- Finishing and yieldStir off the heat until the marshmallows dissolve and the mass loses its gloss, then pour into a buttered 8-inch square pan and mark into squares before it fully sets.
- Cream of tartarThe pinch inverts a little of the sugar and guards against a grainy crystalline set. Do not increase it, or the candy will stay tacky and refuse to firm.
Marshmallow began as a genuine botanical confection, thickened with the mucilage of Althaea officinalis root, but by the late nineteenth century the root had been replaced by gelatin or egg white and marshmallows were an inexpensive factory product sold by the pound in American grocery stores. That shift is exactly why this recipe can exist: a home cook is not making marshmallow, she is buying it and using it as an ingredient, the way she might use chocolate or a packet of gelatin. Church and society cookbooks of the period, of which the Philathea book is one, are full of such candies contributed by name from women's Bible classes and fundraising committees, where confections were made in quantity for sales and socials. Coconut, imported as whole nuts and then shredded and packaged by American processors, was another convenience product cheap enough to appear in the same modest recipe.