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Caramels, Plain or Maple
Make the candy of the preceding receipt, omitting the almonds when it has cooled on the dishes mark it in squares with the edge of a dinner plate rolled over it, and when cold cut the markings through, making little square blocks. For maple caramels use maple sugar in the same way.
This is a variation note rather than a standalone recipe: it assumes you have just made the almond caramel candy on the preceding page and simply tells you to leave out the nuts and cut the sheet into squares. A few points on translating the method.
- It depends on the previous receiptNothing here tells you the sugar quantities, the fat, or the cooking point — all of that sits in the recipe immediately before it. Read the two together before starting; without the parent receipt the instructions cannot be followed.
- The hinge: cut while plasticEverything in this entry turns on catching the slab at the right moment. Score it while the caramel is warm enough to take an impression but firm enough to hold the lines, then cut through once it has set. Score too early and the marks flow closed; wait too long and the sheet shatters instead of parting.
- "Cooled on the dishes"The receipt simply has the candy cooling on dishes; marble slabs were also used for boiled sugar. A buttered or parchment-lined quarter sheet pan does the same job and gives you straight edges to cut against.
- The dinner plate trickRolling the rim of a plate across the surface was a way of pressing parallel grooves without a scoring wheel. A long knife pressed straight down, or a bench scraper, marks more evenly and does not drag the surface.
- Temperature, not guessworkChewy caramels are generally boiled to the firm-ball range, around 245-250F; boiled beyond that they set progressively harder and become difficult to cut cleanly. No temperature is given here, so a thermometer is the simplest way to hit the stage.
- Maple sugarSolid maple sugar is still sold, usually as granulated maple sugar or in pressed cakes, and it is what the recipe means. Maple syrup is not a like-for-like swap: it carries substantial water, so the batch will need a longer boil to reach the same stage.
- Wrapping and keepingCut caramels cold-flow and tend to stick to one another. Wrap each square in waxed paper or cellophane, twist the ends, and keep them in a tin somewhere cool and dry rather than the refrigerator, where condensation makes them weep.
Caramels of this sort — sugar, cream or butter boiled to a chew — spread through American confectionery shops in the second half of the nineteenth century, and by the time Jessup Whitehead was writing for hotel and restaurant kitchens they were familiar enough to be handled as ordinary work. The book's structure here is typical of trade manuals of the period: one worked-out receipt followed by a string of one-line variants, on the assumption that a cook who could handle boiled sugar needed only to be told what to leave out and what to substitute. The maple version reflects a genuinely North American pantry, since cake maple sugar was a common sweetener in the Northeast and eastern Canada. The dinner-plate scoring method is a reminder that specialised candy tools were not assumed — the equipment was whatever stood on the dresser.