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Ondant for Cream Candies
To one pound of granulated sugar, add three-fourths cup of boiling water, and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Let the syrup boil about six minutes, and dip a fork into it. Try this, holding up the fork and watching the syrup on the point, until this spins a thread. Test it further by dropping a little of the boiling sugar into iced water. When it can be made into a soft ball with the fingers, turn it out on a large platter which has been lightly buttered. Be careful not to stir the sugar when boiling, and do not scrape off the sugar that adheres to the side of the saucepan. As soon as the syrup in the dish is warm, stir it with a wooden spoon, until it begins to crumble. It should be a smooth white mass and should be kneaded in the hands like dough. Pack in a bowl, cover it with a cloth, slightly moistened, and set away until needed.
FRENCH VANILLA CREAM (Uncooked) - Break into a bowl the white of one or more eggs, as the quantity you wish to make requires, and add to it an equal quantity of cold water; then stir in confectioners' sugar until you have it stiff enough to mold into shape with the fingers. Flavor with vanilla to taste. After it is formed into balls, cubes or lozenge shapes place upon plates or waxed paper and put aside to dry. This cream is the foundation of all the French creams.
The first half is a standard sugar fondant and still works exactly as described; the second half, the uncooked French cream, is built on raw egg white and should not be made from this text. Notes below cover the fondant plus an explanation of why the uncooked cream fails.
- The hinge: no agitation, no stray crystalsOnce the syrup boils, do not stir it and do not scrape the pan sides. A single sugar crystal dragged back into the syrup seeds coarse graining, which is why the recipe insists on the untouched pan; the light buttering of the platter is simply so the cooled mass releases.
- What the fork test means in degreesThe thread spun off a fork is roughly 230F; the soft ball formed in iced water is 235-240F. A candy thermometer removes the guesswork, and "about six minutes" is only a rough guide because it depends entirely on pan width and heat.
- Sugar by weightOne pound of granulated sugar is about 2 1/4 cups. With three-quarters of a cup of water this is a fairly dry syrup, so keep the heat moderate until the sugar has fully dissolved before letting it boil.
- "As soon as the syrup is warm"This means cooled to about 110F, warm but no longer hot to a fingertip. Working it while still hot produces a gritty fondant; letting it go stone cold makes it too stiff to cream.
- Creaming and kneadingThe mass will turn opaque and crumbly quite suddenly under the wooden spoon, then come together as a smooth dough after a minute or two of kneading. Butter the platter lightly; too much fat makes the fondant greasy rather than releasing it.
- RipeningThe recipe says only to cover the bowl with a slightly damp cloth and set it away until needed, but that rest also ripens the fondant: a day or two lets the crystal structure even out, and it becomes noticeably more pliable for dipping, molding or flavoring.
- YieldOne pound of sugar should give a little over a pound of fondant; the number of centers depends on how large they are formed.
- Why the uncooked cream is unsafeThe French vanilla cream is raw egg white thinned with water and stiffened with confectioners' sugar, then simply left to air-dry on plates. Nothing in the process reaches a temperature that would destroy Salmonella, and the added water lowers the sugar concentration that might otherwise inhibit bacterial growth. Use a current recipe for uncooked candy centers, which will call for pasteurized egg white or none at all.
The title is a printer's slip for Fondant, from the French fondre, to melt, and it names the sugar paste that underlies almost all boxed chocolates and cream centers. Its appearance in a Butterick book is a reminder that the company was a pattern and fashion publisher branching into domestic instruction: by the early 1900s American confectioners had made cream-filled candies a commonplace luxury, and home cooks wanted to reproduce them for parties, church sales and Christmas boxes. The pairing here is instructive about the period's two approaches to candy making, the boiled sugar fondant that needs a thermometer's worth of judgment and the uncooked egg-white cream that any child could stir up. The raw-egg hazard that rules it out today had not yet been identified as a specific egg-borne risk in this era.