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Molasses Candy
Two cups brown sugar, 1/2 cup molasses, 2/3 cup vinegar and water mixed, butter 1/2 size of egg. When candy hardens in cold water, pour into shallow buttered pans and as soon as it is cool, pull until of a straw-like color.
— A Contributor
A pulled taffy of the old-fashioned kind, written for a cook who already knew the cold-water test. The whole recipe hinges on cooking the syrup far enough — to the hard-crack stage — and then pulling it before it sets hard.
- The hinge: how hard is "hardens in cold water"The recipe gives no stage, only the cold-water test. Pulled molasses candy is generally taken to around the soft-crack/hard-ball range (roughly 265-275F on a modern thermometer), where a drop in cold water firms into a mass that holds a thread and is still workable; stopped too early it stays a sticky mass that will never hold its pulled shape, and cooked much further it sets too brittle to pull.
- Butter "1/2 size of egg"Period conversions for butter "the size of an egg" vary, commonly around 2 ounces, so half that is roughly 2 tablespoons. It is there to keep the candy from sticking and to make it pliable, not for flavor.
- Vinegar and water "mixed"The original gives no ratio. A small proportion of vinegar to water — a tablespoon or two in the 2/3 cup — is consistent with the intent, since the acid is only there to invert some of the sugar and discourage graining. More vinegar than that will taste of it.
- Brown sugarLight brown, packed, is the safer choice; dark brown will fight the molasses. Use unsulphured molasses rather than blackstrap, which turns bitter at candy temperatures.
- Pans and cooling"Shallow buttered pans" means a rimmed sheet or two — the thinner the sheet, the faster it cools to a workable temperature. A buttered marble slab or silicone mat works better still.
- PullingWork when the mass is cool enough to handle but still warm through, with buttered hands. Fold and stretch repeatedly; the aeration is what turns it from dark and glassy to opaque, straw-colored and light. Cut into pieces with scissors while it is still soft and wrap each in waxed paper, or the pieces will fuse.
- YieldSomething over a pound of candy; the number of pieces depends entirely on how small it is cut. Humidity is the enemy — molasses candy pulled on a damp day goes tacky within hours.
- Handling hot syrupBoiling sugar syrup is far hotter than boiling water and clings to skin. Pull only after the sheet has cooled enough that it holds a fingerprint without burning.
Pulled molasses candy belongs to the tradition of the "taffy pull" or candy pull, a nineteenth-century American social occasion as much as a confection: the syrup was boiled, poured out to cool, and then worked by hand, the pulling passing the time and doing the work at once. Molasses, cheap and generally on hand, made it a domestic sweet rather than a confectioner's one, and the finished color — the "straw" the contributor names — served as the visual cue that enough air had been worked in. The signature "A Contributor" is in keeping with the anonymous or lightly credited submissions found in church-compiled fundraising cook books; Philathea classes, the young women's arm of the adult Bible class movement that spread through North American Protestant churches in the early twentieth century, produced such books, and contributors' recipes appear under their own names or none at all.