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Pulled Candies: Molasses
Molasses Candy 3 tablespoons butter 2 cups Porto Rico molasses 2/3 cup sugar 1 tablespoon vinegar Melt butter in saucepan or iron kettle, add molasses and sugar, and stir until sugar is dissolved. Boil until mixture becomes brittle when tried in cold water, or to 256 degrees F. During the last part of the cooking candy should be stirred constantly. Add vinegar just before taking from fire. Pour on buttered marble slab or agate tray, and when cool enough to handle, pull until porous and light colored, using tips of fingers and thumbs, not squeezing it in the hand. Cut in small pieces, using large scissors or a sharp knife. Wrap in wax paper.
Daddy's Molasses Candy 1 cup molasses 1/2 cup sugar 3/4 teaspoon soda Put molasses and sugar in saucepan or iron kettle. Stir until dissolved, and boil without stirring over a moderate fire, brushing inside edge of saucepan with butter to prevent boiling over. Cook to 256 degrees F., or until mixture spins fine threads when dripped slowly from tip of spoon. Put three tablespoons of candy into a buttered dish, and keep in a warm place for coloring. Add soda to remaining candy, stir, and turn into buttered pan or on to buttered slab. When cool enough to handle, pull as quickly and as long as possible. When very light, lay upon it the unpulled candy, and pull out together in one long strip. Cut in small pieces, and roll in confectioners' sugar. If candy is not to be eaten at once, wrap each piece in waxed paper. Stretched Molasses Candy 1/2 cup butter 2/3 cup molasses 1 1/3 cups sugar 1 cup water Put butter in saucepan or iron kettle, and when melted add sugar, molasses, and water. Stir until sugar is dissolved, and let boil without stirring until mixture will form a very soft ball that will just keep in shape when tried in cold water. Turn on a buttered marble slab or agate tray, and as mixture cools around sides fold toward center. When cool enough to handle, pull until porous and light colored with tips of fingers and thumbs, not squeezing it in the hand. Cut in small pieces with large scissors or a sharp knife, and arrange on slightly buttered plates, or wrap in wax paper. A few drops oil of peppermint, clove, or cinnamon may be added during the stretching. Molasses Kisses 2 tablespoons butter 1/4 cup water 1 cup molasses 3 tablespoons honey 1 tablespoon corn syrup 3 tablespoons sugar Put ingredients in saucepan or iron kettle, stir until butter melts and sugar dissolves, and boil until it forms a hard ball in cold water, or to 254 degrees or 256 degrees F. Pour gently on buttered marble slab or large tray. When cool enough to handle, pull until light colored. If using the hook, twist each time as it falls from the hook. Use flour on the hands if candy sticks. Roll, cut in pieces, and wrap in wax paper.
Molasses Candy Bars Follow directions for Molasses Kisses, cooking to 256 degrees F. Pull as long a time as possible, then cut in bars, and wrap in wax paper. Velvet Molasses Kisses 1/2 cup molasses 1 1/2 cups sugar 1/2 cup water 1 1/2 tablespoons vinegar 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar 4 tablespoons butter 1/8 teaspoon soda Put molasses, sugar, water, and vinegar in saucepan or iron kettle, stir until it boils, and add cream of tartar. Boil until mixture becomes brittle when tried in cold water, or to 256 degrees F. Stir constantly during last part of cooking. When nearly done, add butter and soda. Pour on buttered marble slab or agate tray, and when cool pull until light colored. While pulling, flavor with one teaspoon vanilla, or half a teaspoon of lemon extract, or a few drops oil of peppermint or wintergreen. Cut in pieces with scissors, and wrap in wax paper.
Six variations on one technique: boil molasses and sugar to the hard-ball stage, then aerate it by pulling. A candy thermometer and a cool, dry day matter more than anything else here.
- The hinge: pull with fingertips onlyThe instruction to use "tips of fingers and thumbs, not squeezing it in the hand" is the whole point of pulled candy. Squeezing compacts the mass; drawing and folding it repeatedly folds in air, which is what turns the candy from dark and dense to pale tan and short-textured. The book's own remedy for sticking, in the Kisses, is flour on the hands.
- Porto Rico molassesA full-flavour cane molasses of the sort period books called for by name, not blackstrap. Use unsulphured full-flavor molasses; blackstrap is too bitter and will taste harsh at this concentration.
- 256°F, and trust the thermometerThe cold-water descriptions in these recipes are used loosely; "brittle when tried in cold water" and "forms a hard ball" are both attached to the same 254-256°F range, which is the upper hard-ball stage. (Stretched Molasses Candy is the exception and wants a genuinely softer ball.) Clip on a candy thermometer and calibrate it in boiling water first, since an error of a few degrees is the difference between candy that will not hold a pull and candy that shatters.
- Iron kettle and agate trayAn "agate" or "granite" tray is speckled enamelware over steel. A heavy stainless or enameled saucepan and a rimmed sheet pan work identically; use a pan at least three times the volume of the syrup, since molasses foams violently. A marble slab, if you have one, cools the sheet faster and evenly.
- What the soda doesThe soda in Daddy's and in the Velvet Kisses reacts with the acid in the molasses to release carbon dioxide, so the candy begins aerating before you touch it and pulls much more easily. It foams hard, so add it with the pan off the heat if you can — though the Velvet Kisses has you add it while the batch is still cooking. The reserved unpulled spoonfuls in Daddy's stay dark and are laid over the pale pulled rope to give the striped effect.
- Vinegar and cream of tartarBoth are there to invert some of the sucrose so the candy stays chewy instead of turning grainy. Note that the recipes are inconsistent about when the vinegar goes in: the first adds it just before taking from the fire, the Velvet Kisses at the very beginning.
- Flavoring oils"Oil of peppermint" and "oil of wintergreen" meant undiluted essential oils, far stronger than a modern extract. Modern wintergreen oil is methyl salicylate and is genuinely toxic in spoon quantities, so use a food-grade candy flavoring at the manufacturer's rate rather than counting drops from an essential-oil bottle. Add during pulling, not while boiling, or it evaporates.
- WeatherPulled molasses candy is hygroscopic. On a humid day it will go sticky within the hour no matter how carefully it is cooked, which is why nearly every recipe here ends in wax paper. Wrap each piece as soon as it is cut and store airtight.
- YieldThe first Molasses Candy gives roughly 1¼ lb; Daddy's and the Kisses somewhat less. Cut with buttered kitchen shears while the rope is still warm, working fast down its length.
Pulled molasses candy is the plainest form of American taffy, and it long outlasted its own economics: molasses was the cheap sweetener of the colonial and early republican kitchen, shipped north from the Caribbean in enormous volume, and by the time this book was written refined sugar had become cheaper while the molasses flavor stayed popular out of habit and affection. The "taffy pull" or candy pull as a social evening is well documented in nineteenth-century American letters and memoirs, and it explains why these recipes read as instructions for a group activity rather than a solitary one, several pairs of buttered hands drawing the same cooling sheet. "Porto Rico" in a 1900s ingredient list gives only a rough terminus, the American spelling of Puerto Rico having been official from 1898 to 1932. "Kisses" here means simply a small wrapped sweet, the same sense preserved in the paper-twisted molasses kisses still sold at Halloween.