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Spun Sugar
2 lbs. sugar. 2 cups boiling water ¼ teaspoon cream of tartar Put ingredients in a smooth saucepan. Boil without stirring until syrup begins to discolor, which is 300° F. Wash off sugar which adheres to sides of saucepan, as in making fondant. Remove saucepan from fire, and place in a larger pan of cold water to instantly stop boiling. Remove from cold water, and place in saucepan of hot water. Place two broomstick-handles over backs of chairs, and spread paper on the floor under them. When syrup is slightly cooled, put dipper in syrup, remove from syrup, and shake quickly back and forth over broomhandles. Carefully take off spun sugar as soon as formed, and shape in nests, or pile lightly on a cold dish. Syrup may be colored if desired. Spun
The ingredient line has come down garbled and incomplete: the sugar itself is missing, and "14 teaspoon" is a broken fraction. Fahrenheit's book calls for roughly 3 cups sugar to 2 cups boiling water with 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar, which is the standard proportion for this syrup.
- The hinge: stop the cooking deadThe plunge into cold water is not optional; the recipe calls for it explicitly. A heavy pan of syrup holds enough stored heat to keep climbing after it leaves the burner, and syrup carried past hard crack colours and takes on a burnt edge before you have spun a single thread.
- Read 300°F on a thermometerThis is the hard-crack stage. A candy or instant-read thermometer clipped to the pan is more reliable than watching for discoloration, since by the time the syrup visibly colors it is usually already past temperature.
- Cream of tartar's jobThe acid inverts a portion of the sucrose as it boils, which keeps the syrup from seizing into crystals. Do not leave it out, and do not stir once the sugar has dissolved.
- Washing the pan sidesA single stray crystal on the wall of the pan will seed the whole batch. A pastry brush dipped in water, run around the inside just above the syrup line, does what the original means by washing off.
- Broomstick-handlesTwo wooden dowels, or the handles of long wooden spoons, laid across the backs of two chairs with newspaper or parchment beneath. The original says nothing about greasing them, though a light film of oil is often recommended to help the threads lift free.
- The dipperThe recipe calls for a dipper; a cut-off wire whisk or a fork will throw finer threads. Shake with the wrist, quickly and in a wide arc, and keep the pan sitting in hot water so the syrup does not stiffen between passes.
- Humidity ruins itSpun sugar is hygroscopic. On a damp day it will go sticky and slump quickly. Make it the day you serve it, keep it away from the refrigerator, and store any waiting nests in an airtight tin with a desiccant.
Spun sugar belongs to the ornamental end of nineteenth-century confectionery, the branch of cookery that came out of the professional pastry kitchen and into the domestic one as sugar grew cheap. It appears in Fannie Farmer's book alongside fondant, nougat and glacé fruits, in a section aimed at the sort of household that expected to send a garnished dessert to the table for company. The technique is the same one used for the caramel cages and veils of modern restaurant plating, and it was old already by 1896: French kitchens knew it as sucre filé, and it was a standard finish for the towering assembled desserts of the previous century. The homely detail of two broomstick handles laid across chair backs is what dates the recipe to the domestic-science movement, which took professional skills and rewrote them for a kitchen with no specialised equipment and no apprentice to sweep up afterward.