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Hard Candies: Brittle
Nougat Nut Brittle may be poured out so that it will be three fourths of an inch thick, and the top smoothed with a rolling pin. Before it cools it, must be cut in pieces one inch long and three eights of an inch wide, with a sharp knife. If it gets too cold before it is all cut, the candy may be warmed slightly by holding it over the stove.
Peanut Brittle I 1 1/2 cups sugar 2/3 cup corn syrup 2/3 cup cold water 2 tablespoons butter 1 1/2 cups shelled raw Spanish peanuts 1/2 tablespoon vanilla 3/4 tablespoon soda 1/2 tablespoon cold water Put sugar, corn syrup, and two thirds cup cold water in iron kettle, stir until mixture boils, cover, and boil three minutes. Remove cover, and boil to 275 degrees F. Add butter and peanuts, and stir constantly about ten minutes, or until peanuts are cooked. Add vanilla and soda dissolved in half a tablespoon cold water. Stir until thoroughly mixed, and turn on slightly buttered marble slab or agate tray. Spread as thinly as possible, and lift constantly while cooling, using a spatula, and pull to distribute nuts evenly. Flatten with palm of hand, and break in pieces.
Peanut Brittle II 2 tablespoons butter 1 1/2 cups sugar 1/2 cup corn syrup 1/2 cup molasses 1/2 cup water 1 cup shelled peanuts 1/4 teaspoon soda Melt butter in saucepan, add sugar, corn syrup, molasses, and water, and boil until brittle when tried in cold water. Add peanuts and soda, mix thoroughly, pour into buttered pan, and crease in squares.
Cocoanut Cones 2 cups sugar 1/2 cup water Grated rind one fourth orange Few grains cream of tartar 2 cups chopped cocoanut Few grains salt Put sugar, water, and orange rind in saucepan. Stir until boiling point is reached, then add cream of tartar, and boil without to 290 degrees F., or until it will snap when tried in cold water. Add cocoanut and salt. Mix thoroughly, shape in small cones, and place on wax paper to dry.
Three brittles and a coconut confection, all built on the same principle: sugar syrup taken to the hard-crack range, then aerated or bound with nuts. A candy thermometer removes nearly all the guesswork the original leaves in.
- The hinge: the sodaThe baking soda gives off carbon dioxide in the hot syrup, partly by breaking down at that heat and partly by reacting with acids present (the molasses in Brittle II, traces in corn syrup), and that gas is what makes brittle porous and snappable rather than glassy and tooth-breaking. Stir it in fast and pour at once — the foam collapses within seconds and the mass sets while you work.
- Soda quantitiesPeanut Brittle I calls for 3/4 tablespoon of soda, a little over 2 teaspoons for 1 1/2 cups of sugar. That is a generous amount by modern practice and will give a very foamy, pale, light-textured brittle; many current recipes use 1 to 2 teaspoons at this scale. Brittle II's 1/4 teaspoon, with molasses in the syrup, gives a denser, darker candy.
- Temperatures the original leaves outBrittle I stops at 275F only to add butter and peanuts; the ten minutes of stirring that follows will carry the syrup higher, presumably into the hard-crack range, and cooks the raw peanuts at the same time. The book gives no second reading. "Boil until brittle when tried in cold water" in Brittle II is the same stage judged by hand — a thread dropped in cold water snaps cleanly, generally reckoned at around 300F.
- Spanish peanuts, rawSpanish peanuts are the small round red-skinned type, and the recipe depends on them going in raw so they roast in the syrup. Roasted salted cocktail peanuts will scorch and turn bitter over ten minutes of stirring at that heat; if you use them, add them at the very end with the soda.
- Iron kettle, marble slab, agate trayA heavy-bottomed saucepan is the modern equivalent of the iron kettle. "Agate" is speckled enamelware; a rimmed sheet pan, lightly buttered, does the job. Marble stays cool and lets you stretch the candy, but it also pulls heat fast, so work quickly.
- Stretching by handThe instruction to lift the sheet constantly with a spatula and flatten it with the palm assumes a tolerance for heat few cooks now cultivate. The candy is still very hot while it is pliable. Use the back of an oiled spoon or an offset spatula, or wear cotton gloves, and accept a slightly thicker sheet.
- CocoanutThe original means fresh coconut, chopped, which is moist and unsweetened. Substitute unsweetened desiccated or frozen grated coconut; sweetened flaked coconut will push an already very sweet candy over the edge and its long shreds do not pack into cones well.
- "Boil without to 290 degrees F."A typesetting drop — it should read "boil without stirring." Once the sugar is dissolved and the cream of tartar is in, leave the pan alone or you will seed crystals.
- YieldEach brittle makes roughly a pound and a half, enough for a large sheet pan broken into serving pieces. The coconut cones give about two dozen small ones; they need several hours uncovered to firm up, and they soften in humid weather.
Peanut brittle in this form is generally traced to two American developments arriving at roughly the same time: cheap Southern peanuts, which are often said to have moved from livestock feed and street-vendor snack to grocery staple in the decades after the Civil War, and commercial corn syrup, which became a household item around the turn of the twentieth century and is what keeps these candies from crystallizing. The baking-soda trick is older than either — confectioners had long known that a pinch of alkali would puff a hard syrup — but it is what separates brittle from plain nut-studded caramel, and it is part of why the two peanut recipes here produce quite different candies. The opening paragraph belongs to a Nougat Nut Brittle on the preceding page, a page-break artefact.