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Peanut Brittle
Mix 3 cups of granulated sugar with 1 scant cup boiling water, and 1/4 teaspoon soda. Let it melt over slow fire. Cook gently without stirring until a little drop in cold water hardens quickly. Add 1 cup roasted, shelled and skinned peanuts, with as little use of a spoon as possible. Turn the mixture into buttered pans and cut while hot. The brittleness of the candy depends much upon the scant use of the spoon. To stir sugar or candy is to invite granulation. Simply melt sugar, then add nuts. ALUME Fireless Cookers The use of the fireless cooker is spreading rapidly on account of its saving in fuel, time, work and worry. It consists of a box or chest packed with a good non-conductor of heat, into which a kettle containing food heated to a boiling point is placed. The lid, consisting of the same non-conducting material, is closed, and heat cannot escape, consequently the water in the kettle remains at the boiling point for several hours, and food in the water is bound to cook the same as if it were on the stove. These cookers are now being manufactured by many firms. Some of them, however, are not as good as home-made ones. A fireless cooker can easily be made by packing excelsior in a square box or bushel basket tightly around the kettle to be used, and on removing the kettle, cotton cloth can be placed over the excelsior and tacked to remain, and a cushion of excelsior made to fit over the top. About 3 inches of excelsior should be left solid at the bottom, and the sides of the box lined with newspapers before putting the excelsior therein. About 4 inches of excelsior should be left between the kettle and the sides of the box, and the same kettle should always be used so as to fit snugly in its own nest.
In the fireless cooker, there is no evaporation. All the goodness and flavor of the food is retained by this slow and thorough mode of cooking. Onions and cabbage may be cooked without the odor permeating the house. While doing the dinner dishes, you can cook what you want for supper, put the kettles in the fireless cooker, and attend to other things, or go out, without the slightest anxiety, and at supper time find it hot and deliciously cooked.
You can cook the oatmeal, or any cereal for 5 minutes after supper, put it in the fireless cooker, and find it thoroughly cooked and hot at any time in the morning needed. You can cook a boiled dinner, on a hot summer day, without any odor or heat in your kitchen. All this can be done on a fireless cooker.
We give below a few directions for cooking with this new cooker, which will enable the beginner to avoid loss and worry by mistakes.
A plain water-and-sugar brittle with no butter or corn syrup, which makes crystallization the whole battle. Note that the text beginning "ALUME Fireless Cookers" is a separate article that has run on from the candy recipe; it has nothing to do with the brittle.
- Do not stir, and mean itThe recipe's own warning is the hinge. Once the sugar dissolves, a spoon dragged through the syrup drops seed crystals and the whole pan turns opaque and sandy. Swirl the pan if you must move things, and wash any crystals off the sides with a wet pastry brush before the syrup comes to a boil.
- "Hardens quickly" is hard-crackThe cold-water test described here is the hard-crack stage, 300-310F on a candy thermometer. A drop should shatter between your fingers rather than bend. Below about 290F the brittle will be chewy and will pull at fillings.
- "Slow fire"Medium-low until the sugar has fully dissolved, then medium. Sugar this concentrated goes from pale to burnt in under a minute at the end, so pull it the moment it takes on a light amber colour.
- A scant cup of waterJust under a cup, so about 7 1/2 fl oz or 220 ml. The exact amount matters little since nearly all of it boils off; it exists only to dissolve the sugar evenly.
- The sodaA quarter teaspoon of baking soda gives off gas as it heats, foaming the syrup very slightly and contributing to the candy's porous snap. In books of this period it may also appear as saleratus. Added at the start, as here, its effect is likely to be milder than when it is beaten in at the end, as modern recipes usually direct.
- Warm the peanutsCold nuts drop the syrup temperature sharply and can set it before it is spread. Hold the roasted, skinned peanuts in a low oven, around 200F, and tip them in off the heat.
- Pans and cuttingButter a rimmed sheet pan generously, or use a silicone mat. Score with an oiled knife within about a minute of pouring; after that the sheet will simply crack where it likes, which is also acceptable.
- WeatherSugar work at hard-crack goes sticky in humid air. Make it on a dry day and store the pieces airtight with a sheet of parchment between layers.
- YieldThree cups of sugar and a cup of peanuts give roughly 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 lb of brittle, enough to spread thin over a half-sheet pan.
Brittles belong to the oldest and simplest branch of confectionery: sugar cooked to the hard-crack stage with nothing added but nuts, a technique that predates both corn syrup and the candy thermometer. What dates this version is the peanut itself. Peanuts were cheap, roasted on street corners and sold by the bag through the late nineteenth century, and by the period of community and manufacturers' cookbooks like this one they were among the commonest American candy nuts. The insistence on judging doneness by a drop of syrup in cold water reflects a kitchen without reliable thermometers. The fireless-cooker essay that follows on the same page is a reminder of what these books were also selling: fuel economy, at a moment when coal ranges and iceless summers made a well-insulated box of excelsior a genuine domestic advance.