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Molasses Candy
2 cups Porto Rico molasses ⅔ cup sugar 3 tablespoons butter 1 tablespoon vinegar An iron kettle with a rounding bottom (Scotch kettle) or copper kettle is best for candy making. If one has no copper kettle, a granite kettle is best for sugar candies .
Put butter in kettle, place over fire, and when melted, add molasses and sugar. Stir until sugar is dissolved. During the first of the boiling stirring is unnecessary, but when nearly cooked, it should be constantly stirred. Boil until, when tried in cold water, mixture will become brittle . Add vinegar just before taking from fire. Pour into a well buttered pan. When cool enough to handle, pull until porous and light-colored, allowing candy to come in contact with tips of fingers and thumbs, not to be squeezed in the hand. Cut in small pieces, using large shears or a sharp knife, and then arrange on slightly buttered plates to cool. 1 cup molasses 3 cups sugar
A pulled molasses taffy that depends entirely on how far the syrup is cooked. A thermometer replaces the cold-water test without changing anything else.
- The hinge: "brittle in cold water"That is the crack stage, roughly 270-290F on a candy thermometer, though the book gives no figure. Under it the candy will sag and stick rather than pull; much over it and the molasses scorches and turns bitter.
- Porto Rico molassesA mild, light cane molasses of the period, closest to today's ordinary unsulphured molasses. Do not substitute blackstrap, which is far more bitter and will dominate the finished candy.
- The pan and the stirringAny heavy stainless or enameled saucepan works; the copper and "Scotch kettle" advice is about even heat, not chemistry. Use a generously large one, since molasses foams up as it approaches the crack stage, and stir constantly once it is nearly cooked, as the recipe directs.
- Why the vinegar goes in lastThe acid inverts some of the sucrose, which keeps the candy from turning grainy while it is pulled. Added early it would keep working through the whole boil and leave the batch soft and sticky.
- PullingButter your hands, and work the mass with fingertips and thumbs as directed. Squeezing it in the fist both burns you and drives the air out; the pale color comes from air worked in, not from cooling.
- CuttingPull the rope out to about half an inch thick and cut with buttered kitchen shears while it is still warm and pliable. Once fully cool it will shatter rather than cut.
- The two lines at the endThe stray "1 cup molasses, 3 cups sugar" is not an addition to the first ingredient list; it appears to be the ingredient list belonging to the recipe that follows, whose method is not printed here.
- Yield and keepingAbout 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 lb of candy. Wrap the pieces individually in waxed paper; unwrapped taffy absorbs humidity within hours and fuses into a single lump.
Molasses candy belongs to the American "taffy pull," a nineteenth-century social occasion as much as a confection: the mass has to be worked by several pairs of buttered hands while it is still warm, which made it a natural excuse for a party. Its ubiquity was economic. Molasses, the by-product of cane sugar refining shipped north from the Caribbean, was cheaper than refined sugar for most of the century, and Fannie Farmer's specification of Porto Rico molasses reflects a trade in which Boston merchants had been deeply involved for generations. The advice about copper and iron kettles within the recipe is a reminder that this book was written for kitchens where the confectioner's craft was still done at home with whatever heavy pan the household owned, and where doneness was judged by dropping syrup into a cup of cold water rather than by reading a dial.