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Boston Chips
Boil the required quantity of sugar to the crack, flavoring and coloring it as desired; turn it onto a greased marble slab, and let it cool. Turn in the edges, and with a hook fastened in the wall, pull the mass until it is quite light in appearance. Run it through a machine set so close that it will come out as thin as a wafer. Cut it into fancy shapes, wind them round an oiled stick, and let them get cold before packing away in boxes. Candied Fruit or Nuts Boil one-half pound of loaf sugar in one breakfast cupful of water. The syrup must not be stirred, and must boil furiously. Take the prepared fruit or nuts on the point of a large needle or fine skewer, dip them into the syrup, and then lay them on a dish that has been slightly buttered or oiled, or string them on a thread, and after dipping them in the syrup, suspend them by the thread. When oranges are used, divide them into sections and dry them on a sieve, or in a warm room, or in the open air. Cherries should be stoned. Walnuts are particularly nice prepared in this way.
Two confectionery procedures from the hotel candy bench, written for a cook who already knew the sugar stages. The whole of the first depends on hitting one temperature and not stirring afterward.
- "Boil to the crack"In period usage the crack stages run roughly 290-310F, at or near what a modern thermometer calls hard crack. Taken too low, the pulled chips will bend and go sticky; taken well beyond the crack, the sugar starts to caramelise and the colour muddies.
- Loaf sugarRefined cane sugar sold in a cone or block and broken up as needed, prized because it was the cleanest sugar available. Ordinary granulated sugar is the direct replacement, weight for weight.
- A breakfast cupfulRoughly 8 to 10 fluid ounces in period usage; the breakfast cup was the large one. For half a pound of sugar, one cup of water is a reasonable reading.
- Do not stirStated for the fruit syrup but true of both. Once the syrup boils, agitation and stray crystals on the pan wall seed graining and the batch turns cloudy and sandy. Wash the sides down with a wet brush instead. A pinch of cream of tartar or a spoonful of glucose syrup is the standard modern insurance.
- The wall hookProfessional pulling was done on a fixed iron hook so the confectioner could throw and fold the mass with both hands, working air into it until it turns satin-white. Heavy heatproof gloves are not optional; sugar at 300F sticks to skin and keeps burning.
- "Run it through a machine"The text does not say what machine; the sense of rolls "set so close" points to an adjustable candy roller of the sort found on a confectioner's bench. Such machines are hard to come by now. Without one, roll the warm pulled sugar between oiled sheets or on a warmed oiled slab, working fast, since it stops moving as it cools.
- The marble slabMarble or a steel candy table pulls heat out of the sugar evenly. A cold baking sheet is a poor substitute because it chills the edges long before the middle. Grease lightly with a neutral oil, not butter, which contains water and milk solids.
- HumidityPulled sugar and candied fruit both absorb moisture from the air and go tacky. Work on a dry day, and pack the finished chips in airtight tins with the layers separated, not in the open boxes the original assumes.
- YieldNeither quantity is given for the chips, and the dipping recipe gives no count either; the dipped fruit is best eaten the same day.
Oscar Tschirky's 1896 book was compiled from the working practice of a large New York hotel, and its confectionery pages read like notes from a specialist department rather than a home kitchen -- the wall hook, the marble slab and the rolling machine were all fixtures of a professional candy bench. Pulled sugar of this kind belongs to a nineteenth-century tradition of aerated hard candy that also produced taffy, humbugs and barley sugar; pulling folds air into the mass and turns clear syrup opaque and silky. The name "chip" is probably best read as a reference to the wafer thinness, though that is inference rather than established fact. The dipped fruit and nuts that follow are the older and simpler branch of the same craft, a technique for glazing long used by European confectioners, and Oscar's remark that walnuts are particularly nice is the sort of practical aside that marks the book as a record of what was actually served.