Fondant
2 cups granulated sugar
2 tablespoons corn sirup or ⅛
1 cup water teaspoon cream of tartar
1 teaspoon vanilla
Put the sugar, corn sirup and water in a saucepan and heat slowly. Do not let it begin to boil until the sugar is dissolved. Wash down the sides of the pan with a fork wrapped in a damp cloth or else cover and cook for two or three minutes so that the steam will carry down the crystals that have been thrown on the side of the pan. Remove the cover and continue to boil slowly without stirring to the soft-ball stage, or 238° F. While cooking, keep the cover on part of the time so the steam can help to keep the crystals washed down.
Remove from the fire and pour at once on large platters or slabs which have been wet with water, and let it stand until it is lukewarm. Cream thoroughly; then knead with the hands until it is smooth and free from lumps. Fondant is better if allowed to ripen for several days. It may be wrapped in waxed paper and put in a tightly covered jar.
A straightforward sugar-boiling exercise whose success rests entirely on crystal control. The ingredient column has been scrambled in the original typesetting; read it as 2 cups granulated sugar, 1 cup water, and either 2 tablespoons corn syrup or ⅛ teaspoon cream of tartar, plus 1 teaspoon vanilla.
- The hinge: keep stray crystals outA single sugar crystal falling back into the syrup will seed the whole batch coarse. Wash the pan sides down as directed, and once boiling begins do not stir or scrape at all.
- 238°F still holdsSoft-ball is genuinely 235–240°F; a digital thermometer makes the cold-water test unnecessary. Calibrate in boiling water first and adjust for altitude, subtracting about 1°F per 500 feet above sea level.
- Corn syrup or cream of tartar, not bothBoth are interfering agents that break up sucrose crystal formation, and either alone is enough. Cream of tartar inverts some of the sugar and gives a slightly softer fondant; corn syrup is generally reckoned the more predictable of the two, since the degree of inversion from cream of tartar depends on how long the syrup is cooked.
- Vanilla goes in lateThe ingredient list gives vanilla but the method never mentions it. Add it as the syrup cools, not while it is boiling, or the flavour drives off with the steam.
- The slabA marble pastry slab, a heavy sheet pan, or a large platter all work; the point is a cool surface that pulls the heat out fast. Rinse it with cold water and leave it damp rather than greased.
- Cool before creaming, not afterWait until the mass is lukewarm — about 110°F — before you begin working it. Stirring while it is still hot produces large, gritty crystals; stirring cold produces a slab you cannot knead.
- Creaming with a stand mixerThe paddle attachment on low will do the initial creaming in a few minutes, at which point the mass turns opaque and stiff. Finish the kneading by hand as written.
- RipeningSeveral days in a sealed jar lets moisture equalise through the mass, which makes it noticeably smoother and easier to work. It will keep for weeks refrigerated.
- YieldRoughly 1 lb of fondant, enough to centre four or five dozen small chocolates or to colour and shape as mints.
Fondant — from the French fondre, to melt — is the base stock of the confectioner's trade: a controlled mass of microscopic sugar crystals suspended in saturated syrup, which is why it melts on the tongue rather than crunching. Its appearance in a general household book like this one reflects the state of American home candy-making in the early twentieth century, when cheap refined granulated sugar, commercial corn syrup (said to have become widely available around the 1900s) and what was often described as the newly affordable candy thermometer put work that had belonged to professional confiseurs within reach of an ordinary kitchen. Books of the period are often said to give fondant first in the candy chapter and then build a dozen recipes on it — bonbons, peppermint creams, stuffed dates, chocolate centres — treating it as a pantry staple to be made in quantity and ripened, much as one would keep a pastry dough on hand.