Divinity
Two and one-half cups of sugar, 1/2 cup corn syrup, 1/2 cup water. Cook until it will spin a thread and then pour one-half of it into the whites of 2 eggs beaten stiff. Cook the other half until it will harden in water, then pour it into the other half. Beat until creamy, then pour into a buttered dish or drop from spoon.
A two-stage divinity, where the first syrup stabilizes the meringue and the second sets it. A candy thermometer removes all the guesswork the original leaves in.
- "Spin a thread"That is the thread stage, 230-235F. The syrup falls from the spoon in a fine strand rather than in drops.
- "Harden in water"Hard-ball stage, 250-265F: a drop into cold water forms a ball that holds its shape and resists a squeeze. Syrup taken much below that range tends to give a soft, sticky candy that is slow to firm.
- Why the syrup is splitThe first, cooler half cooks and stabilizes the whites into a firm meringue; the second, hotter half drives out enough moisture to make the batch set.
- Divide before cookingThe recipe reads as though one batch is cooked in stages, but it is far easier to cook one syrup to thread, pour half over the whites, then return the remainder to the heat and continue to hard ball. Use a wide, heavy pan and a fresh reading each time.
- Corn syrupThe original specifies only "corn syrup"; light corn syrup is the usual choice. It is an interfering agent that keeps the sucrose from crystallizing; do not substitute honey or maple, which change both flavor and set.
- BeatingA stand mixer with the whisk is the practical tool. Pouring hot syrup in a thin stream down the side of the bowl while the machine runs is safer and gives a better texture than hand beating, which the original assumed.
- HumidityDivinity is notoriously weather-dependent. On a damp day it absorbs moisture from the air and refuses to firm; make it when the kitchen is dry.
- When to stopBeat only until the mass loses its gloss and a dropped spoonful holds a peak without spreading. Past that point it turns crumbly in the bowl and cannot be dropped neatly.
- YieldRoughly 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 lb, perhaps 40 or so dropped pieces, or a shallow 8-inch buttered dish cut into squares once cold. Chopped walnuts or pecans folded in at the end are a common addition in recipes of this kind.
Divinity belongs to a family of beaten sugar-and-egg-white candies that became common in American home cookbooks in the first decades of the twentieth century, once inexpensive glucose syrup was sold in grocery stores under brand names; the interfering syrup is what makes the smooth, non-grainy texture reliable enough for an ordinary kitchen. The name is generally said to come from nothing more than a cook's exclamation over the taste, and no documented origin for it exists. Its close relatives are older and better traced: nougat and the boiled-icing meringues of nineteenth-century confectionery use the same method of pouring hot syrup into beaten whites. Community and club collections like this one spread it quickly, since the ingredients were cheap, kept well on a pantry shelf, and the finished candy could be dropped by the spoon without molds or marble slabs.