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Chocolate Caramels (One and a half cups grated)
One and a half cups grated chocolate, four of brown sugar, one and a half of cold water, piece of butter size of an egg, table-spoon of very sharp vinegar; flavor with two table-spoons vanilla just before removing from fire. Do not stir, but shake the vessel gently while cooking. Boil on the top of stove over a brisk fire until it becomes brittle when tried in water; pour into a well buttered and floured dripping-pan, and check off in squares while soft. - Miss Emma Collins,
A boiled sugar candy rather than a chewy modern caramel: the recipe takes the syrup to the hard-crack stage, so expect something closer to chocolate toffee that snaps. A candy thermometer replaces the water test entirely.
- The hinge: cook to 300-310FThe hinge: cook to roughly 300-310F -- "Brittle when tried in water" corresponds to what modern candy-making calls the hard-crack stage, about 300-310F. Stopping short at soft-ball (around 238F) gives a soft, sticky chewy candy rather than the brittle slab the recipe describes; taken much hotter, the chocolate solids are liable to scorch.
- Grated chocolateMost likely plain unsweetened block chocolate, the usual household form of the period. Use 1 1/2 cups (about 6 oz) finely chopped or grated unsweetened chocolate. Do not substitute chocolate chips or cocoa powder; the fat and sugar balance differs.
- Butter the size of an eggA standard nineteenth-century measure, roughly 2 oz, or 4 tablespoons.
- The vinegar is doing chemistryA tablespoon of sharp vinegar inverts part of the sucrose as it boils, which helps keep the finished candy from turning grainy. Cider or white vinegar both work; much of the acetic acid boils away, so little vinegar flavour survives.
- Do not stirMeant literally. A spoon dragged through boiling syrup seeds crystals along the pan wall and the whole batch turns sandy. Shake the pan, or wash the sides down with a wet pastry brush.
- Two tablespoons of vanillaA very large quantity by modern standards; homemade household extracts may well have been weaker than commercial ones today. Use 1 to 2 teaspoons of modern extract, stirred in at the very end as the recipe directs, just before the pan leaves the fire.
- Dripping-panThe roasting pan that sat under a joint of meat. A rimmed half-sheet pan, buttered and floured as directed, is the equivalent; the flour helps the slab release once cool.
- Scoring and yieldMark the squares while the sheet is still pliable, as the recipe says, then snap along the lines when fully cold. Expect roughly 2 lb of candy, on the order of 60 to 70 one-inch pieces.
Caramels were a comparatively new commercial sweet in America when this book appeared: chocolate and cream caramels spread through candy shops in the decades after the Civil War, and receipts for them turn up in community cookbooks of the 1880s and 1890s, usually in a confectionery chapter alongside taffy, butterscotch and molasses candy. The Dixie Cook Book, like its Northern cousins from the same publishing house, was assembled from contributions signed with the donor's name, which is why Miss Emma Collins is credited here; the format made the book a record of what particular households actually cooked rather than an anonymous professional's ideal. The reliance on the cold-water test rather than a thermometer is the clearest period marker: a cook judged hard-crack by dropping syrup into a cup of cold water and testing it with her fingers.