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Peanut Honey Candy
1 Cup Butter 2 Cups Honey 1 Cup Boiling Water Pinch Soda Boil to a hard ball, and pour over a layer of rolled peanuts, which have been scattered evenly over the bottom of a buttered pan. When nearly cold mark off in long strips and roll up tight; then slice across with a sharp knife before it gets quite cold.
A boiled honey caramel poured over crushed peanuts, then rolled and sliced while still pliable. The whole recipe hinges on hitting the right sugar stage and on working fast in the narrow window before the sheet sets hard.
- "Hard ball" in numbersHard ball is 250-266F (121-130C) on a candy thermometer. With honey rather than refined sugar, aim for the lower end, around 250-255F; honey browns and turns bitter quickly past that.
- Rolled peanuts"Rolled" means crushed with a rolling pin, not whole. Put roasted, skinned, salted or unsalted peanuts in a bag or between sheets of parchment and crush to coarse rubble, then spread them in an even single layer.
- The sodaA pinch of baking soda (older books often use the word saleratus, though that term originally covered potassium bicarbonate) reacts with the acids in honey and aerates the syrup slightly, giving a lighter chew. It also makes the pot foam up suddenly, so use a saucepan with plenty of headroom.
- Butter and separationA full cup of butter to two cups of honey is a high fat ratio and the mixture will want to split as it boils. Stir steadily but not vigorously, and if it does separate near the end, take it off the heat and beat it back together before pouring.
- Pan sizeThe recipe does not say what size pan to use. Something around a quarter sheet pan (roughly 9x13 inches), buttered, gives a sheet thin enough to roll; a smaller pan will give a thicker slab that is harder to curl.
- The timing window"When nearly cold" is the critical instruction and it is short, perhaps five to ten minutes. Score the strips while the sheet is still warm and flexible, roll them at once, and slice before the candy hardens; once fully cool it shatters instead of cutting.
- HumidityHoney candy is hygroscopic and will go tacky in damp weather. Make it on a dry day and store the slices in an airtight tin, layered with parchment.
- YieldHard to state, since the recipe never says how many peanuts to scatter. Expect somewhere in the region of a pound and a half of candy from the syrup, cut into a few dozen slices depending on how thin the sheet is and how tightly the strips are rolled.
Household cookbooks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries often included a confectionery chapter, on the assumption that a housekeeper would be making her own sweets for calls, church socials and Christmas boxes rather than buying them. Peanuts had become cheap and widely available in the United States after the Civil War, when Southern acreage and mechanical shelling brought the price down and roasted peanuts turned into a common street food; they show up across American candy books of the period in brittles, chews and pralines. Honey here does the work of sugar syrup, though it behaves differently: it is more acidic, scorches sooner, and holds moisture, which is why this candy is rolled and sliced into a chew rather than snapped like a brittle.