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Lemon Candy
Take a pound loaf-sugar and a large cup water, and after cooking over a slow fire half an hour, clear with a little hot vinegar, take off the scum as it rises, testing by raising with a spoon, and when, the "threads" will snap like glass pour into a tin pan, and when nearly cold mark in narrow strips with a knife. Before pouring into the pans, chopped cocoa-nut, almonds, hickory-nuts, or Brazil-nuts cut in slices, may be stirred into it. - Mrs. V. K. W.
A plain hard-crack sugar candy of the sort every nineteenth-century household book carried, written for a cook who already knew what boiling sugar looks like at each stage. The whole thing hinges on reading the syrup correctly.
- The hinge: hard-crack stage"Threads will snap like glass" is the hard-crack stage, 300-310F on a candy thermometer. Below that the candy stays tacky and chewy; much above it the sugar begins to caramelize and turns bitter and brown.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined sugar sold in a cone and broken up as needed, prized because it was cleaner than the grocer's brown or soft sugars. Ordinary granulated white sugar is its direct descendant; use a pound, about 2¼ cups.
- Where is the lemon?The recipe as printed contains no lemon at all. Period practice was to stir in a few drops of oil of lemon or lemon extract off the heat, just before pouring; the book evidently assumed the reader knew. Take the title as the intended flavouring rather than an omission you can reconstruct exactly.
- The vinegarAn acid added to boiling sugar inverts a portion of it, which discourages the syrup from crystallizing into a grainy mass. Cream of tartar or lemon juice does the same job and is often called for in later books. A teaspoon is plenty; more will be tasted.
- Half an hour over a slow fireTreat this as a description of a wood range, not a timing. On a modern burner a pound of sugar and a cup of water will reach hard-crack in roughly 15-20 minutes over medium heat. Go by the thermometer or by a drop of syrup dropped into cold water, which should shatter.
- Skimming and the sides of the panSkim as directed, and also wash any sugar crystals off the pan sides with a wet brush. A single stray crystal falling back into the syrup can seed the whole batch and turn it opaque.
- The panA "tin pan" here is most likely a shallow rimmed tin sheet. Oil or butter it well, or use a silicone mat; hard candy welds itself to bare metal.
- Marking the stripsThere is a short window, perhaps a minute or two, when the sheet is set but still yielding. Score it then. Wait too long and it will only break along its own lines.
- Nuts and coconutWarm them first. Cold nuts dropped into 300F syrup drag the temperature down and can make the candy sticky. Hickory nuts were a common American pantry item; pecans or walnuts substitute directly.
- Yield and keepingAbout a pound of candy. Hard candy absorbs moisture from the air and grows sticky; store it airtight, layered with waxed paper, and do not attempt it on a humid day.
Confectionery sections in American community cookbooks of the 1880s and 1890s mark a moment when sugar had become cheap enough for ordinary households to boil a pound of it for pleasure. Before mid-century, refined loaf sugar was expensive and candy-making was largely a professional trade; by the time The Dixie Cook Book was compiled, home candy-pulls and taffy parties were a common form of domestic entertainment, and books like this one supplied the technical instruction. Note that the recipe teaches a technique more than a flavour: master the hard-crack stage and the same syrup takes lemon, peppermint, coconut, or whatever nuts the household had put by. The attribution to "Mrs. V. K. W." credits a contributor by initials alone, though how the volume gathered such contributions is not clear: it was a commercially compiled book, an adaptation of the Buckeye Cookery material for a Southern market, rather than a community-gathered subscription cookbook.