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Caramels
(1) Boil some syrup and flavor with either liquors, essences, or some strong extract of coffee; then hold it over a very slow fire in a saucepan in order to allow it to cook slowly for about two or three minutes; in this way it will acquire flavor, but little or no additional color. Oil a slab, pour the caramels on it, and when it has cooled a little, mark it with the back of a knife in the shape of a small square or lozenge. When quite cool, break in pieces. (2) Take one-fourth pound of chocolate broken up, two pounds of brown sugar, one-fourth of a pound of fresh butter and one-half pint of milk. Pour the milk into a preserving-pan and add the other ingredients to this. Allow it to boil for at least half an hour, stirring frequently. When it is done, a crust of sugar will form on the spoon and on the side of the pan. Pour in a tablespoonful of extract of vanilla or other flavoring; remove from the fire and stir rapidly until the caramel begins to thicken. Then pour it quickly into buttered-pans, and when nearly cold, cut into small squares.
Two different confections share one heading here: (1) is a clear boiled-sugar candy scored into lozenges, (2) is a chocolate milk caramel of the chewy sort. Recipe (1) gives no quantities at all, so treat it as a method note rather than a formula.
- The hinge: use a thermometerBoth parts rely on sugar reaching a specific stage, and neither says so. For the chewy chocolate caramels of (2), cook to about 245-248F (firm ball); below that they slump, and much past 250F they set progressively firmer, eventually too hard to chew. The "crust of sugar on the spoon and on the side of the pan" is a real sign of a heavy reduction but it is not precise enough to rely on.
- "Boil some syrup" in (1)No quantity or strength is given, which suggests a kitchen where sugar syrup was a standing item. Read it as plain sugar syrup boiled to the hard-crack stage, around 300-310F, which is what will set hard enough to score and snap. The instruction to hold it over a very slow fire for two or three minutes is about letting flavour bloom without the sugar darkening further, as the recipe itself says.
- Flavouring after the boilAdd liquors, essences and coffee extract off or barely over the heat. Alcohol and volatile essences flash off in seconds at candy temperatures, and a wet addition to sugar at 300F will spit violently.
- The slabAlmost certainly the confectioner's marble slab, oiled with a neutral oil, which draws heat out fast and evenly. A heavy sheet pan lined with lightly oiled parchment or a silicone mat is the modern equivalent; a wooden board will not do.
- Preserving-panA wide, heavy pan, originally copper. Use the heaviest saucepan you have with at least three times the volume of the mixture, since milk and sugar foam up hard.
- Quantities in (2)Two pounds brown sugar, 4 oz chocolate, 4 oz butter, half a pint of milk. "Chocolate" in a book of this date generally meant unsweetened cooking chocolate rather than modern eating chocolate; a bittersweet bar will make the batch noticeably sweeter. Half a pint is one cup.
- The half-hour boilThirty minutes is plausible for this volume in a wide pan, but it is a description of how long reduction takes, not a target. Stir constantly toward the end: milk solids and sugar scorch on the bottom quickly and the burnt taste cannot be corrected.
- Cutting and yieldScore while the surface is still warm and pliable, cut through when nearly cold, and wrap the pieces in waxed paper or they will fuse. Two pounds of sugar plus the chocolate, butter and milk makes a large batch, so use a pan wide enough to spread it thin.
Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's ma tre d'h tel, published a very large compilation in 1896, and its confectionery entries read like notes passed between professionals rather than instructions for a home cook: the slab, the preserving-pan and the vague "some syrup" all assume a pastry kitchen already stocked and staffed. The word caramel came into English from French, itself generally traced through Spanish caramelo to a late Latin term for sugar cane, and through the nineteenth century it covered both senses used here, the burnt-sugar flavour and colour of a hard boiled sweet, and the newer American chewy candy made by boiling sugar with milk and butter. That second style spread quickly after the 1880s among commercial caramel makers; adding chocolate to it, as in the second recipe, was a natural step in a decade when chocolate was becoming cheap enough to use by the quarter pound.