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Butter-Scotch
Three pounds "coffee A" sugar, fourth pound butter, half teaspoon cream tartar, eight drops extract of lemon; add as much cold water as will dissolve the sugar; boil without stirring till it will easily break when dropped in cold water, and when done, add the lemon; have a dripping-pan well buttered and pour in onefourth inch thick, and when partly cold, mark off in squares. If pulled, when partly cold, till very white, it will be like ice-cream candy.-Mrs. J. S. R.
A hard-crack sugar candy with a small amount of butter, closer to what we would now call lemon toffee than to modern brown-sugar butterscotch. Everything depends on cooking the syrup far enough without letting it grain.
- "Coffee A" sugarA 19th-century grade of refined white sugar, generally coarser in crystal than today's standard granulated. Ordinary granulated sugar is the direct replacement, weight for weight.
- Water quantity"As much cold water as will dissolve the sugar" is vague by design; for 3 lb of sugar, about 1 to 1 1/2 cups is enough to wet it through and let it melt evenly. Excess water only lengthens the boil.
- The stage that matters"Easily break when dropped in cold water" is the hard-crack stage, 300-310F on a candy thermometer. Below that the candy stays chewy and sticks to the teeth; above 315F it starts to taste scorched.
- Why no stirringOnce the sugar is dissolved, stirring drags crystals down from the pan sides and seeds the whole batch into grain. The cream of tartar is there for the same reason: it inverts a little of the sucrose and keeps the syrup smooth.
- Add the flavouring off the heatLemon extract is alcohol-based and will flash off almost entirely if it goes in over the flame. Pull the pan off, wait a few seconds for the bubbling to subside, then stir it in.
- "Dripping-pan"The roasting or drip pan under a joint of meat. Any rimmed baking sheet works; butter it generously, since a quarter-inch sheet of hard candy releases only from a well-greased surface.
- Marking offScore the squares with a buttered knife while the slab is still warm and pliable, which is what "partly cold" directs. Wait until it is fully cold and it will shatter along its own lines rather than yours.
- PullingThe alternative finish requires buttered hands and candy cooled to the point where it can be handled but still stretches. Pulling folds air into the mass, which is what turns it opaque white.
- Yield and conditionsAbout 3 lb of finished candy, enough to fill a half-sheet pan a quarter-inch deep. Work on a dry day; hard candy pulls moisture out of humid air and goes tacky within hours.
Butterscotch is generally traced to Yorkshire in the first half of the 19th century, and the origin of the "scotch" is genuinely uncertain: one common explanation is scoring or scotching the cooled slab into squares, though others favour "scorch" or a Scottish link -- the scoring account, at least, fits this recipe's instruction to "mark off in squares" rather neatly. Early versions like this one are made with white sugar and lean heavily on the butter and a flavouring, here lemon; the deep molasses note we now expect came later, once brown sugar became the standard base. Its place in a household book like this reflects how much candy-making was still domestic work: sugar was cheap, commercial confectioners were expensive, and a competent cook was expected to read the hard-crack stage by dropping syrup into a cup of cold water. The closing note comparing pulled butter-scotch to "ice-cream candy" points to a whole family of home-pulled white candies that were the entertainment as much as the result, made at pulling parties where the cooling sugar was worked by hand in pairs.