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Walnut Candy
Crack the walnuts and shell them carefully. Pound or chop one and one-half pints of the kernels. Mix three-fourths of a teacupful of vinegar and one and one-half teaspoonfuls of gelatine dissolved in a little hot water with one and one-half pounds of brown sugar, place it over a moderate fire and cook until quite stiff. Pour a thin layer of this syrup into buttered-tins, then add the pounded or chopped walnuts, spreading them evenly, pour over the remainder of the syrup and let the candy stand until cold; then cut it into squares.
A brown-sugar chew in the old vinegar-candy family, set with a little gelatine. It is straightforward, but the doneness cue is the whole recipe and the original gives no temperature.
- "Cook until quite stiff"This is the hinge. Boil the syrup to the firm-to-hard ball stage, roughly 248-260F on a candy thermometer; a spoonful dropped into cold water should form a ball that holds its shape and is chewy rather than sticky. Under-cooked, the slab never firms enough to cut; past about 270F it turns brittle and shatters instead of chewing.
- A teacupfulPeriod teacups are usually reckoned at about 6 fluid ounces, though the term is inconsistent; on that reading three-fourths of one is roughly 4 1/2 fl oz, a generous half cup. Cider vinegar was a common choice in recipes of this family; the acid inverts some of the sugar, which helps keep the candy from going grainy, so do not reduce it thinking of the flavour.
- GelatineOne and a half teaspoonfuls of granulated gelatine is about two-thirds of a modern envelope. Dissolve it in a tablespoon or two of hot water until fully clear before it goes into the sugar, and add it at the start as directed rather than at the end.
- A moderate fireMedium heat on a burner. Stir only until the sugar has dissolved, then leave it alone and wash any crystals down the sides of the pan with a wet brush; stirring a boiling sugar syrup is the usual cause of a sandy texture.
- Walnuts by volumeA pint of shelled walnut pieces weighs roughly 7 to 8 ounces, so one and a half pints is about 11 ounces, 300-330g. Toasting them briefly first is not in the original but improves a candy this sweet.
- Buttered tinsThe original says tins, plural, and this quantity of syrup and nuts will fill more than one 8-inch square pan if you want a slab thin enough to cut easily. Pour a thin base layer, scatter the nuts, then pour the rest quickly before the first layer skins over, or the two halves will separate when you cut.
- Cutting"Let it stand until cold" is optimistic for a chew of this kind. Score it into squares while it is still warm and firm enough to hold a line, then break along the scores once fully set.
- Yield and keepingAbout 2 lb of candy. Wrap the pieces individually in waxed paper; brown sugar chews pull moisture from the air and will fuse into one block in an open tin.
Vinegar candy was a fixture of nineteenth-century American home confectionery, made at candy-pulls where the hot syrup was worked by hand until it lightened. The vinegar was not a flourish but chemistry: acid breaks sucrose into glucose and fructose, which keeps the finished sweet chewy rather than crystalline, the same job that corn syrup does in later recipes. The gelatine here gives the slab enough body to cut into squares instead of being pulled into ropes. Oscar Tschirky, the Swiss-born maitre d'hotel of the Waldorf whose name went on the 1896 book, gathered a great many domestic American sweets alongside the hotel's French cookery, and the presence of a homely walnut chew in a kitchen best known for Waldorf salad says something about how broad the book's intended audience was.