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Velvet Molasses Candy
1 cup boiling water 3 tablespoons vinegar ½ teaspoon cream of tartar ½ cup melted butter 1/4 teaspoon soda Put first four ingredients in kettle placed over front of range. As soon as boiling-point is reached, add cream of tartar. Boil until, when tried in cold water, mixture will become brittle. Stir constantly during last part of cooking When nearly done, add butter and soda. Pour into a buttered pan and pull same as Molasses Candy. While pulling, add one teaspoon vanilla, one-half teaspoon lemon extract, few drops oil of peppermint, or few drops oil of wintergreen. 2 cups molasses 1 cup sugar ½ cup boiling water
The ingredient list in this printing has come apart: the four ingredients you are told to "put first" — molasses, sugar, boiling water, vinegar — have been shuffled to the end of the entry. Read it as 2 cups molasses, 1 cup sugar, ½ cup boiling water and 3 tablespoons vinegar into the pan first, then cream of tartar, then butter and soda near the end.
- The butter quantityThe printed page gives ½ cup melted butter, which is what our text now reads. It goes in near the end of cooking, along with the soda.
- Brittle in cold water means a numberThe book gives no thermometer reading, but the cold-water test described here corresponds to what is now called the hard-crack stage, roughly 290-310F. A drop should set glassy and snap rather than bending.
- "Front of range" On a coal or wood range the front of the top, nearest the firebox, was the hottest working area. On a modern burner this simply means medium-high heat, and a heavy pan matters more than the setting.
- Why the acid and the soda are thereVinegar and cream of tartar invert part of the sugar so the candy pulls smooth instead of turning grainy; the quarter teaspoon of soda reacts with the acid and foams the hot syrup, giving a lighter, opaque texture -- probably what the name "velvet" is describing, though the book does not say. Add the soda with the pan off the heat: the mixture climbs the sides.
- Stir only at the endEarly stirring encourages crystals on the pan wall. Leave it alone until the syrup is thick and heavy, then stir constantly for the last few degrees so the bottom does not scorch.
- Pull at the right temperaturePour onto a buttered pan or marble slab, let the edges cool, and fold them in. Begin pulling when the mass is warm but comfortable to handle; buttered hands, not floured. It is ready when it lightens in colour and stiffens.
- Flavouring oils are not extractsOil of peppermint and oil of wintergreen are concentrated; a few drops is literal, and more will make the batch inedible. Buy food-grade flavouring oil, and note that undiluted wintergreen oil (methyl salicylate) is toxic in more than trace amounts — it is not something to pour freehand.
- Yield and storageThe recipe gives no yield; expect a batch of a couple of pounds. Cut with buttered scissors as you twist the rope, and wrap each piece in waxed paper; molasses candy pulls moisture from the air and will weld into one lump if left loose.
Molasses was the everyday sweetener of New England kitchens long after refined sugar became available, cheap because it arrived as a by-product of the West Indies sugar and rum trade, and candy made from it was the standard home confection of the nineteenth century. The taffy pull — heating the syrup, then working it between two pairs of buttered hands until it turned pale and satiny — was as much a winter parlour amusement as a cooking method, and many books of the period do give the pulling instructions in such detail and the boiling in so few words. "Velvet" here is often taken to refer to the texture the soda produces: the tiny gas bubbles beaten through the pulled candy make it opaque and short rather than clear and glassy, though no recorded etymology confirms it. The confections chapter assumes a cook with a coal range and no thermometer, hence the cold-water test, which remained the standard measure in domestic candy-making well into the twentieth century.