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Peppermint Drops
Cook slowly one cup of granulated sugar with one-fourth cup of water, stirring occasionally. Test frequently by dropping a little of the candy from a spoon, and as soon as "threads" fly from the spoon remove from the fire, cool a little and flavor highly with essence of peppermint; then drop the candy from a spoon on sheets of foolscap paper and set aside to harden.
PRALINES-Boil two cups of powdered sugar, one-half cup cream and one cup of maple syrup until it forms a soft ball when tested in cold water. Remove at once from the fire and beat vigorously until the mass assumes a smooth, creamy consistency. Add two cups of any kind of nuts broken into bits and drop from the tip of a spoon on to buttered paper, making it in little mounds. It may also be poured into a buttered tin in the ordinary manner and marked off when partially cool.
Two candies run together in one entry, both governed by sugar temperature rather than time. A thermometer settles what the spoon tests only approximate.
- The hinge: how far to cook the peppermint syrup"Threads fly from the spoon" describes thread stage, roughly 230-235F, which on its own sets soft and sticky. For drops that harden into a crisp disc, cooking somewhat further -- nearer 238-240F -- and then stirring briefly so the syrup grains as it falls is one common modern approach. If the drops stay tacky overnight, the syrup was undercooked.
- Essence of peppermintPeriod essences were alcohol-based and comparatively weak, hence "flavor highly." Modern peppermint extract is stronger and peppermint oil far stronger again -- with oil, two or three drops per cup of sugar is plenty. Add it off the heat so the volatiles are not driven off.
- Foolscap paperFoolscap was a standard size of writing paper, the full sheet roughly 13 1/2 by 17 inches. Parchment paper or a silicone mat does the same job and releases better.
- Powdered sugar in the pralinesIn 1911 "powdered sugar" usually meant a fine-milled granulated sugar, not the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold now. Use granulated; modern confectioners' sugar will make the syrup cloudy and slightly starchy.
- Soft ball, in numbersThe praline syrup is done at 236-240F. Below that the mounds will not hold their shape; above 244F they turn crumbly and dry.
- Beating the pralinesBeat only until the mass loses its gloss and thickens -- usually one to three minutes. Beat past that point and it seizes in the pan; a spoonful of hot cream will loosen it briefly, but working fast matters more.
- Cream and syrup"Cream" is unspecified here; in 1911 the word covered everything from thin to heavy, so a rich cream is the safer modern substitution. Real maple syrup is what is meant; pancake syrup is mostly corn syrup and will not set the same way.
- YieldThe peppermint batch gives roughly 30 to 40 small drops. The praline batch, with two cups of nuts, makes about 24 to 30 mounds of standard size.
Peppermint drops began life closer to the apothecary counter than the candy shop: sugar lozenges flavored with peppermint oil were sold through the nineteenth century as stomach settlers and breath sweeteners, and the household version here is simply the cheapest possible way to make them at home -- one cup of sugar, water, and flavoring, dropped onto scrap writing paper. The pralines that follow carry a French name usually traced to the almond confection associated with the household of the seventeenth-century soldier and diplomat du Plessis-Praslin, but by the time the Butterick Cook Book appeared in 1911 the American form was firmly established, made with pecans in Louisiana and with whatever nuts and maple syrup were at hand further north. That both appear crammed into a single paragraph says something about how candy was treated in a general household manual: briefly, and well apart from the serious cooking.