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Chocolate Candy to Pull
8 ounces of sugar. 8 ounces of light colored molasses or syrup. Half cupful of cream. 1 ounce of grated chocolate. Vanilla to flavor. Boil the cream, molasses and sugar together about 15 minutes, then throw in the chocolate and boil till the candy sets brittle in cold water. Pour on dishes, flavor when cold enough to handle, and pull.
A pulled taffy in the old confectioner's style, thickened with cream and darkened with molasses. It works, but it is worked entirely by the cold-water test, and that is the part to translate first.
- The hinge: read the temperature, not the clock"Sets brittle in cold water" is the hard-crack stage, 300-310F on a candy thermometer. The 15 minutes given for the first boil is a rough guide only; pan width, heat and the water content of your cream will move it by several minutes either way.
- Weights, not cups8 ounces of sugar is a little over one cup granulated; 8 ounces of molasses or syrup is about two-thirds of a cup by volume. Weigh both if you can, since the sugar-to-syrup ratio is what keeps the finished candy pullable rather than grainy.
- "Light colored molasses"This means first-run or mild molasses, not blackstrap, which is bitter and will fight the chocolate. Modern light molasses, golden syrup or light corn syrup all stand in; corn syrup is the surest against crystallisation.
- The chocolateGrated chocolate in a book of this period is unsweetened chocolate liquor, sold in cakes. One ounce of unsweetened baking chocolate is the direct equivalent. Cocoa powder is not, as it lacks the cocoa butter that keeps the pulled candy supple.
- Cream will catchA dairy syrup taken to hard crack scorches easily near the end. Use a heavy pan with room to boil over, stir at the bottom once the mixture darkens, and pull it off the heat the moment it hits temperature.
- Pour on dishesButtered marble or a silicone mat is the modern equivalent; buttered rimmed baking sheets work. Grease them before you start boiling, as there is no spare time once the syrup is ready.
- Flavour when coolVanilla added to a 300F syrup boils off. Adding it as the mass cools to the point where you can handle it, roughly 120F, is exactly right. Around a teaspoon suits this quantity.
- PullingButter your hands or wear clean cotton gloves under disposable gloves; the mass is still near 120F and holds heat. Pull until the candy lightens and turns satiny, then draw into a rope, cut with buttered scissors and wrap each piece, or the humidity will make them weep.
- YieldAbout one pound of finished candy, roughly 40 to 50 small pieces.
Candy-pulling was one of the few kitchen tasks American households treated as entertainment: the "taffy pull" is documented all through nineteenth-century social writing as an occasion for young people, the mass being passed back and forth between two pairs of buttered hands until it lightened. What is on this page, though, is the trade version. The American Pastry Cook was written for bakers and hotel confectioners, and the recipe assumes a practised eye for the cold-water test and an operator who can judge hard crack without a thermometer. The chocolate is a period marker as well: sold in solid unsweetened cakes to be grated as needed, and added here only at the end of the boil.