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Candy (Sweets to the Sweet)
"Sweets to the Sweet."
In order to understand the secret of candy making, it will be necessary to understand the action of heat upon sugar. The first step in this process is the reduction of sugar to a syrup, which is done by adding water to sugar in the proportion of a pint and a-half of water to three and a-half pounds of sugar. When this boils up in the kettle we have simple syrup. A few more minutes of boiling, reduces the water which holds the sugar in perfect solution. At this stage, if the syrup is allowed to cool, the candy crystallizes on the sides of the dish, and we have rock candy. If, instead of allowing it to cool at this point, we allow it to reach a higher degree of heat, we shall find, in putting a spoon into the syrup, when drawing it out a long thread of sugar will follow the spoon. It is to this point that confectioners bring the syrup for the greater number of candies produced. The greatest skill is required on the part of the operator to push the boiling sugar to this point without allowing it to reach the caramel state, when it becomes bitter and dark and is no longer fit to use as a confection. The proportion of sugar and water for candy making will be three and one-half pounds of sugar to ane and one-half pints of water. To this add one teaspoon of cream of tartar, which will prevent the tendency of the sugar to assume the granular condition. To test the candy, drop into cold water. When this becomes at once hard and brittle the vessel should be at once removed from the fire. Flat sticks are formed by pouring the candy into long flat pans, and when cooling crease the mass, which will readily break into sticks when cold. To make round stick candy, when cool enough to handle and while warm enough to mould, roll into sticks with the hands. To colour candies, take small portions of the candy while cooling, and colour, then put together in strips and twist slightly.
This is a primer on sugar boiling rather than a single recipe, and it assumes a cook who judges syrup by eye. A candy thermometer settles every question the text leaves open.
- The stages by numberThe "long thread" the writer describes is roughly 230-235F, but syrup at that heat will not set hard. The cold-water test she gives — hard and brittle at once — is hard crack, 300-310F. Boil to 300-310F for the stick candy she is making, and understand that the thread on the spoon is only a signpost along the way.
- Do not push past 320FDo not push into caramel -- Her warning is the hinge of the whole page. Somewhere around 320F the sugar begins to caramelise and darken, and once it turns bitter nothing recovers it. Pull the pan the moment the thermometer reads temperature; residual heat in a heavy pot keeps cooking the sugar.
- Quantities and scaleThree and a half pounds of sugar to a pint and a half of water is about 8 cups sugar to 3 cups water — a confectioner's batch yielding well over 3 lb of candy. For a home batch use 2 cups sugar to 3/4 cup water and a scant 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar, keeping the same proportions.
- Cream of tartarIt works by inverting part of the sucrose into glucose and fructose, which physically get in the way of crystal formation. A teaspoon to three and a half pounds is correct; more will make the candy sticky and reluctant to set.
- Keeping the sides cleanThe recipe says nothing about it, but a single stray crystal on the pan wall will seed the whole batch grainy. Wash the sides down with a wet pastry brush during the first minutes of boiling, cover the pan briefly to let steam do the work, and stop stirring once the syrup boils.
- Rock candy is not a few minutes' workCooling saturated syrup does not produce rock candy in the sense the text implies. Real rock candy grows on strings or sticks in a covered jar over a week or more; what you get by cooling a hot syrup quickly is a grainy fudge-like mass.
- Pans and surfacesUse the heaviest saucepan you own, at least three times the depth of the syrup, since sugar climbs when it boils. Pour onto an oiled marble slab or a silicone mat rather than the "long flat pans" of the original, and score with an oiled knife while the sheet is still pliable.
- Handling and colouringSugar at 300F causes serious burns and stays dangerous long after it looks calm. Wear cotton gloves under oiled hands if you intend to pull and twist sticks. For colour, use gel or paste food colouring, a drop at a time — liquid colouring adds enough water to soften the set.
The heading is Gertrude scattering flowers on Ophelia's grave in Hamlet, a tag so worn by the 1870s that it had become a commonplace detached from the funeral it belongs to. The Home Cook Book was compiled in Chicago in the 1870s from contributions by local women and sold in aid of a charitable home, and this page reads like a professional confectioner's knowledge passed into a domestic collection: the language of "the operator" and "confectioners" is trade language, not kitchen language. Home candy making expanded sharply in the second half of the nineteenth century because refined white sugar became cheap and reliably pure, so a household could boil a clear syrup without the skimming and clarifying that earlier loaf and raw sugars demanded. What the writer lacks is a thermometer; confectioners' thermometers existed but were costly, and the cold-water test she describes remained the standard household gauge well into the twentieth century.