Candies
in cold water and pressed between the fingers. Remove from stove and add one teaspoon of vanilla. Pour into buttered tins and when sufficiently cool, check off in squares. When perfectly cold wrap in paraffine paper.
The chopped meats from one pound of English walnuts or from one-half pound of blanched almonds may be added to the above ingredients.
This is the tail end of a boiled candy recipe — the ingredient list and the first half of the cooking are on the preceding page — but the finishing instructions are complete enough to work from if you are making caramels or a fudge-type candy from another source.
- The cold-water testDropping a little syrup into cold water and pressing it between the fingers is the pre-thermometer way of judging sugar concentration. A ball that holds its shape but flattens when pressed is the firm-ball stage, roughly 245-250F; a ball that stays hard and only just yields is hard-ball, about 250-265F. Caramels are usually pulled at 245-250F, fudge lower, at 234-240F soft ball.
- Vanilla off the heatThe instruction to remove the pan from the stove before adding vanilla is not fussiness. Alcohol-based extract evaporates rapidly in syrup at these temperatures, carrying off aroma with it, and it will spatter if added to the pan on the boil.
- Buttered tinsA shallow rimmed pan, buttered generously, is what is meant. The quantities are on the preceding page, so the size can only be guessed at; an 8x8-inch or 9x9-inch pan would suit a batch built on a pint of cream or milk. Modern practice is to line with parchment and butter that, which makes the slab lift out whole.
- "Check off in squares"Score the surface with a buttered knife while the candy is still warm and pliable, then cut through along the score lines once it is cold. Waiting until it is fully set before scoring gives cracked, ragged edges on caramels.
- Paraffine paperThis is what we now call waxed paper — paper coated in food-grade paraffin. It is still sold, and it remains the right wrapper for caramels because it releases cleanly. Plastic film sticks to the surface and pulls it.
- The nutsA pound of English walnuts in the shell yields something over 7 oz of nutmeat, which is roughly what half a pound of blanched almonds gives, so the two options are near enough equivalent. Buy about 8 oz of shelled nuts either way. The recipe does not say when to add them; stirring them in with the vanilla, after the pan comes off the heat, works.
- YieldNo yield is given, and the quantities are on the preceding page. If a batch fills an 8x8-inch pan, cutting at roughly one inch gives about 64 pieces.
Home candy-making was at its height when the Butterick book appeared. Cheap refined sugar and reliable stoves moved caramels and fudge out of the professional shop and into the domestic kitchen, and cookbooks of the period devote whole chapters to them. The cold-water test preserved here belongs to the older tradition: cooks judged thread, soft ball, firm ball, hard ball, soft crack and hard crack entirely by hand, and the vocabulary survives on candy thermometers to this day. Wrapping each square in paraffine paper reflects the other reason these recipes flourished ravtravelled well, which made them easy to give away or carry.