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Chocolate Caramels (II)
Mrs. P. B. Ayer.
Two cups of brown sugar, one cup molasses, one cup chocolate grated fine, one cup boiled milk, one tablespoon flour; butter the size of a large English walnut; let it boil slowly and pour on flat tins to cool; mark off while warm.
This is a nineteenth-century boiled candy with no thermometer reading and no timing, so the cook is expected to judge doneness by eye. That judgment is the whole recipe.
- The hinge: cook to firm ballCaramels of this type need to reach roughly 245-250F (firm-ball stage) or they will never set and you will have chocolate sauce. Test a drop in cold water if you have no thermometer: it should form a ball that holds its shape but still yields to pressure.
- "One cup chocolate grated fine"Almost certainly unsweetened block chocolate, the usual cooking form of the period, sold in cakes to be grated. Reckon on roughly 4 oz of chopped unsweetened chocolate; sweetened chocolate will make the candy cloying, and cocoa powder is not a like-for-like swap because it lacks the cocoa butter.
- MolassesPeriod molasses was generally the lighter, sweeter sort now sold as unsulphured baking molasses. Blackstrap is far more bitter and mineral-tasting and will dominate the chocolate.
- The flourA tablespoon of flour thickens and binds the boiling mass and may help keep it from going grainy, roughly the role a modern recipe would give corn syrup. Whisk it into the milk before it goes into the pan or it will lump.
- Butter "the size of a large English walnut"Somewhere between 1 and 2 tablespoons (half an ounce to an ounce); period books vary. Nineteenth-century books measured butter against nuts and eggs because it was sold in tubs, rolls and irregular lumps rather than stamped sticks.
- "Boil slowly"Milk sugars and grated chocolate scorch readily. Use a heavy pan, keep the heat moderate, and stir more or less constantly once the mixture thickens; the bottom will catch the moment you stop.
- Pans and marking"Flat tins" means a shallow rimmed pan, buttered. A quarter sheet pan or an 8-inch square pan gives a good thickness. Score the surface into squares with a buttered knife while the slab is warm and still soft, then break along the lines once cold.
- YieldOn the order of 2 lb of candy. Wrap the squares individually in waxed paper; left unwrapped and stacked, they will tend to stick together.
The Home Cook Book was compiled in Chicago in the 1870s from recipes contributed by named local women, with proceeds going to the Home for the Friendless -- which is why this page carries Mrs. P. B. Ayer's name and why the book holds two different chocolate caramel recipes that do not agree with each other. Caramels themselves were a relatively new commercial sweet in America at that point: chocolate was still sold mainly as a hard unsweetened block to be grated, and the cheap sugar and the molasses sold in barrels and jugs that made boiled candy a home project rather than a confectioner's specialty had only recently become household staples. The tablespoon of flour is a tell of the era -- before glucose syrup was widely available to home cooks, starch is often said to have helped keep a boiled sugar candy chewy instead of grainy.