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Molasses Candy to Pull
1 large coffee cupful of molasses. 12 ounces of sugar, either brown or white. One-third of a cupful of vinegar. Half cupful of water. 1 ounce of butter. Put all in a kettle and boil 15 or 20 minutes. Try in cold water. It must boil til the drops set brittle and fairly snap between the fingers. Then pour it on buttered plates. Pull.
Molasses candy if not pulled but merely allowed to set on dishes is improved by having about a half teasponful of soda stirred in after it has been taken from the fire and before it is poured out. Flavorings may be added at the same time.
A straightforward pulled taffy, with one gap the original leaves open: the temperature. Everything else follows from getting that right.
- The hinge: cook to temperature, not to the clock"Fairly snap between the fingers" is the hard-crack stage, roughly 300F on a candy thermometer. For candy you intend to pull, stop at the low end (295-300F); much past that and the mass sets too fast and too glassy to work by hand.
- 15 or 20 minutes is a guessBoiling time depends entirely on pan width and burner output. In a modern heavy 3-quart saucepan this batch may reach hard crack in 10 minutes or take 25. Use the cold-water test the recipe describes, or a thermometer.
- A coffee cupfulPeriod coffee cups generally ran larger than teacups; read it as a generous cup, about 8 to 10 fl oz of molasses. 12 ounces of sugar is by weight, about 1 3/4 cups granulated or about 1 1/2 cups firmly packed light brown.
- MolassesUse unsulphured light or dark molasses. Blackstrap was not what these books meant and will give a harsh, mineral bitterness that pulling does nothing to soften.
- Buttered plates means a cold, hard surfaceA buttered marble slab or a buttered rimmed sheet pan works better than china. Pour, let the edges firm, fold them toward the center with a buttered scraper, and start pulling as soon as it can be handled.
- PullingButter your hands well. Pull and fold for 10 to 15 minutes, until the dark ribbon lightens to tan and stiffens; stretch into a rope, cut with buttered scissors, and wrap each piece in waxed paper. Unwrapped molasses candy turns sticky within hours.
- The soda is for unpulled candy onlyAs the recipe says, half a teaspoon of baking soda stirred in off the heat aerates the batch and lightens the bite of poured candy. Skip it if you are pulling, since pulling already introduces the air and the soda makes the mass crumbly.
- Weather mattersSugar work at hard crack picks up atmospheric moisture. On a humid day the candy will soften and go tacky regardless of technique; a dry day gives a clean snap.
- YieldAbout 1 1/4 pounds of finished candy, or 60 to 70 small pieces.
Pulled molasses candy was the centerpiece of the nineteenth-century American "taffy pull," a parlor entertainment in which the cooled sugar was worked in pairs. Molasses, cheap and abundant through the West Indies trade, was the ordinary sweetener of American households long after refined sugar became available, and it appears regularly in the candy chapters of nineteenth-century domestic manuals. The soda trick has a chemical logic: molasses is acidic, and a pinch of soda both neutralizes some of that sharpness and throws off carbon dioxide, which is why the poured candy comes out paler and more friable. Books like this one tend to give a recipe in exactly this shorthand form, trusting the reader to know the cold-water test that the printed thermometer temperature would later replace.