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Philadelphia Caramels
Put three and one-half pounds of sugar into a sugar-boiler with one-fourth of a pound of butter, one-fourth teaspoonful of cream of tartar, a quarter of a pound of cocoa paste, and one ounce of white wax of paraffin; pour in one pint of rich cream, and boil over a clear fire to the crack. Have ready a well-greased marble slab with iron bars on it, pour over the mixture, and let it get cold. Cut it into cubes or other shapes, wrap them up separately in wax paper, and lay them away in boxes.
A confectioner's batch, scaled for a hotel: nearly four and a half pounds of finished candy. Two words carry all the risk here — "crack" and "paraffin".
- "To the crack" is hotter than caramelCrack stage in old confectionery runs about 285–300F; hard crack goes to 310F. Cooked that far, this sets into a hard chocolate toffee that shatters rather than chews. If you want the chewy caramel the name now suggests, stop at firm-ball, 245–250F, and use a digital thermometer rather than the cold-water test.
- The paraffinParaffin was used in commercial candy work to firm the piece and keep it from sticking to the wrapper; how commonly it was dosed at this rate is not documented. Only food-grade paraffin is intended for eating; it passes through undigested. It can simply be left out with no loss beyond a slightly softer, tackier caramel.
- Cocoa pasteThis is cacao liquor — ground cocoa nibs with all their fat, no sugar, no added cocoa butter. Unsweetened baking chocolate is the direct modern equivalent, four ounces of it.
- Sugar-boilerAn unlined copper pan with a pouring lip and no side seams. Use the heaviest-bottomed saucepan you own, at least four quarts for this volume, since the cream will foam high when it comes to the boil.
- Cream of tartarA quarter teaspoon inverts a little of the sugar and guards against graininess. It is doing real work in a batch this large; do not skip it.
- Iron bars on a marble slabAdjustable steel caramel bars formed a frame of the desired depth on an oiled slab. A sheet pan lined with buttered parchment or foil gives the same result — a half-sheet for the full batch, a quarter-sheet for a reduced one — aiming for a slab about half an inch deep.
- Rich cream"Rich cream" meant the thickest skimmed cream, unstandardised and of no fixed fat content. Use heavy or whipping cream; here it goes into the pan with the sugar at the outset rather than into hot syrup.
- Yield and keepingAbout four and a half pounds, depending on how far it is boiled down. Quarter the recipe for a home batch. Wrapped individually in waxed paper and boxed airtight, they keep several weeks; humidity, not time, is what ruins them.
Philadelphia built a serious confectionery trade in the nineteenth century — Whitman, Croft, and dozens of smaller houses — and cream-based caramels were sold as a richer article than the cheaper water-and-glucose sort. Milton Hershey made his first fortune in caramels of this kind, running the Lancaster Caramel Company in Pennsylvania before selling it in 1900 to concentrate on chocolate. That Oscar Tschirky includes it at all is a reminder that a great hotel made its own petits fours and after-dinner sweets in-house; the pastry department was expected to turn out boxed candies to order, wrapped and put away exactly as a commercial confectioner would.