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Candy (One pound sugar one and a-half)
One pound sugar, one and a-half cups water, three tablespoons rose water; boil twenty minutes; then pull.
Four ingredients and a single verb at the end: this is a pulled sugar candy, the ancestor of taffy and of the white "molasses candy" pulls that were a parlour amusement well into the twentieth century. The recipe assumes you know when boiled sugar is ready, which is the one thing worth spelling out.
- Use a thermometer, not the clock"Boil twenty minutes" depends entirely on pan width and burner output. For candy that pulls glossy and sets firm, cook the syrup to about 265-270F (the top of hard ball, just short of soft crack); at 300F and above, in the hard-crack range, it becomes brittle and will crack rather than stretch.
- QuantitiesOne pound of granulated sugar is about 2 1/4 cups. The water is generous by modern standards and simply extends the boiling time; nearly all of it boils away before the syrup reaches temperature.
- Add the rose water at the endThree tablespoons of rose water boiled for twenty minutes will lose most of its perfume. Stir it in off the heat, just before pouring, or the candy will taste only of sugar.
- Rose water itselfNineteenth-century rose water was a kitchen staple used where we would use vanilla. Modern food-grade rose water varies a great deal in strength; taste it first, and reduce to a tablespoon if it is a concentrated Middle Eastern brand.
- A pinch of acid helpsThe recipe has no cream of tartar, corn syrup or vinegar, so the syrup is prone to recrystallising into a grainy mass. A quarter teaspoon of cream of tartar or a teaspoon of vinegar added at the start inverts some of the sugar and keeps the candy pliable.
- Do not stir once it boilsWash any sugar crystals down the sides of the pan with a wet brush at the start, then leave it alone. Agitation after boiling begins is the usual cause of a failed pull.
- PullingPour onto an oiled marble slab or heavy baking sheet, let it cool at the edges until it can be handled with buttered hands, then fold and stretch repeatedly for ten to fifteen minutes. The candy lightens to opaque white as air works in; cut into pieces with oiled scissors while still warm.
- Yield and keepingAbout a pound of finished candy, roughly 40 small pieces. Wrap individually in waxed paper, since pulled sugar goes sticky within hours in humid air.
Candy pulls were as much entertainment as cookery: the hot sugar had to be worked by hand while it cooled, which meant several pairs of buttered hands and, as is often said of such gatherings, an excuse for young people to stand close together. Recipes of this kind appear throughout American community cookbooks of the 1870s and 1880s, usually as terse one-liners because the technique was assumed rather than taught. The rose water dates it: distilled flower waters were among the common sweet flavourings in English and American kitchens before cheap vanilla extract displaced them late in the century, and a book that still reaches for rose water in a plain sugar candy is looking backward to an older tradition of confectionery. The Home Cook Book (Chicago, 1874) is generally counted among the early American charity cookbooks compiled from contributed household receipts, which would explain the shorthand throughout: these were notes passed between women who already knew what "then pull" involved.