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Candy of Any Flavor
Three and a half pounds refined sugar, one and a half pints water, one tea-spoon cream tartar; mix in a vessel large enough to hold the candy when expanded by the heat; boil over a brisk fire, taking care that it does not burn. The heat should be applied at bottom and not at the sides. After boiling fifteen minutes, remove a small portion of the melted sugar with a spoon, and cool by placing in a saucer set in cold water. When cool enough, take a portion between thumb and finger, and if it forms a "string" or "thread" as they are separated, the process is nearly done, and great care must be used to control the heat so that the boiling may be kept up without burning. Test frequently by dropping a bit into cold water placed near; if it becomes hard and brittle, snapping apart when bent, it is done and must be removed at once, and the flavoring stirred in: Then pour into shallow earthen dishes, thoroughly but lightly greased, and cooled until it can be handled ; pull, roll into sticks or make into any desired shape.
A basic pulled-candy syrup, the kind of all-purpose base a nineteenth-century kitchen would flavor and pull into sticks. The whole recipe hinges on reading the syrup by hand; a thermometer removes the guesswork.
- The measuresThree and a half pounds of sugar is about 8 cups; a pint and a half of water is 3 cups. Cream of tartar is still sold under that name and acts here as an inverting agent that keeps the syrup from crystallizing while it is pulled.
- The stage that matters"Hard and brittle, snapping apart when bent" is the hard-crack stage, 300-310F. The earlier "string or thread" test is only a waypoint at around 230F, so the fifteen minutes given is the start of the watching, not the end of the cooking.
- Use a thermometerA candy thermometer reaches hard crack far more reliably than the cold-water test, and once past 300F the syrup darkens and scorches quickly.
- Heat from the bottomThe instruction about applying heat at the bottom and not the sides most likely concerns syrup scorching on the pan wall above the syrup line, where it burns and can seed crystals. On a modern burner, use a heavy pan whose base matches the element, and wash down the sides once with a wet brush early in the boil.
- Do not stirOnce the sugar has dissolved, leave the syrup alone. Stirring at high temperature throws crystals and turns the finished candy grainy rather than glassy.
- Vessel sizeThe warning about expansion is real: the syrup boils up hard as it concentrates. Use a pan of at least 4 quarts for this quantity.
- FlavoringAdd extracts or oils off the heat, as directed. Volatile flavors boil off at hard-crack temperatures, and citrus or peppermint oils are considerably stronger than extracts, so use roughly a quarter as much oil as you would extract.
- The pouring slabGreased shallow earthenware works, but a lightly oiled marble slab or a silicone mat is faster to cool and easier to lift from. Oil your hands as well before pulling, and pull while the mass is hot enough to move but cool enough to hold.
- YieldAbout three and a half pounds of finished candy, which is a large batch by modern standards. Halving it is straightforward, though the syrup will reach temperature faster.
Pulled sugar candy of this kind was one of the few sweets a home kitchen could make without specialized confectioner's equipment, and books like The Dixie Cook Book (a compilation of the Buckeye/Practical Housekeeping family of American cookbooks, published in the 1880s) generally give one all-purpose syrup and let the cook decide on peppermint, lemon, wintergreen or vanilla. The reliance on hand tests rather than temperature reflects the period: graduated thermometers for sugar boiling were available to confectioners, but they were uncommon in home kitchens, and domestic cooks learned instead to name the stages by feel and appearance, from thread through soft ball to crack. Cream of tartar, a byproduct of winemaking, was the household stand-in for the glucose syrup a commercial confectioner used to keep sugar from graining. The instruction to pull the cooled mass is what turns clear amber syrup opaque and satiny, by working air into it in fine threads, and it is the same technique behind the striped sticks sold in nineteenth-century candy shops.