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Vanilla Caramels
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
½ cup corn sirup
4 tablespoons butter
½ cup milk
1 cup cream or condensed milk
Cook the ingredients, except the vanilla, to the firm-ball stage, or 246° F. Remove from the fire, add the vanilla and pour into a buttered pan. When it is cold, turn it out of the pan and cut it into squares.
A straightforward boiled caramel that depends almost entirely on hitting the right temperature. The recipe gives the number, which many books of this period do not, so the main work is in reading the original's ingredients correctly.
- The hinge: 246°FEverything about the finished texture is decided by the thermometer. A few degrees under and the caramels will not hold a cut edge; a few degrees over and they turn hard and brittle rather than chewy. Calibrate the thermometer in boiling water first and adjust for altitude, subtracting roughly 1°F per 500 feet above sea level.
- "Corn sirup"Light corn syrup, essentially the same kind of glucose syrup sold today. It is here as an interfering agent, not for sweetness: it keeps the sucrose from crystallising into a grainy candy. Do not substitute more sugar for it.
- "Cream or condensed milk"Genuinely ambiguous. In period American usage "condensed milk" usually meant the sweetened tinned product, which would push this sweeter; unsweetened tinned milk was more often called evaporated, though the terms were not used consistently. Heavy cream is the safer reading and gives the richer caramel.
- Milk solids scorchWith a cup of cream, a half cup of milk and butter in the pot, this will catch and burn if left alone. Stir constantly with a heatproof spatula, scraping the corners of the pan, over medium heat. A heavy-bottomed pan of at least three quarts is needed, since the mixture climbs as it boils.
- Adding the vanilla off the heatThe instruction to remove from the fire first is sensible: at 246°F the volatile aromatics (and the alcohol, if an extract is used) are largely driven off, and the mixture may spit when liquid is added.
- Pan and yieldAn 8-inch square pan gives caramels roughly half an inch thick. Expect up to about 64 one-inch squares. Butter the pan generously or line it with buttered parchment with an overhang.
- Cutting and keepingLet the slab cool several hours at room temperature, not in the refrigerator, where condensation makes it sticky. Cut with a buttered heavy knife or an oiled bench scraper, and wrap each square in waxed paper or they will fuse back into a block within a day.
Caramels of this type — boiled sugar enriched with dairy and cut into squares — appear in American cookbooks from the second half of the nineteenth century, a period in which glucose syrup made from cornstarch and tinned condensed milk both became widely available. Both appear here, and the corn syrup does the anti-graining work that older recipes handled with instructions about cream of tartar and not stirring, while tinned milk let a household make a cream candy without a dairy. The specified 246°F points to a book written for a kitchen with a candy thermometer, though the older cold-water test — a spoonful dropped into cold water forming a ball firm enough to hold its shape between the fingers — remained in use alongside it.