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Everton Toffee
Miss. Wyllie.
Take one pound of treacle, the same quantity of moist sugar, half a pound of butter; put them in a saucepan large enough to allow of fast boiling over a clear fire; put in the butter first, and rub it well over the bottom of the saucepan, and add the treacle and sugar, stirring together gently with a knife; after it has boiled for about ten minutes ascertain if it is done by having ready a basin of cold water, and drop a little of the mixture into it from the point of a knife; if it is sufficiently done, when you take it from the water it will be quite crisp. Now prepare a large, shallow tin pan or dish rubbed all over with butter to prevent its adhering, and into this pour the toffee from the saucepan to get it cold, when it can be easily removed.
A three-ingredient boiled sugar confection that lives or dies by the cold-water test. Ten minutes is a guideline; the water test is the actual instruction.
- The hinge: cold water, not the clockBoiling times vary enormously with pan width and heat. Drop a little into cold water and look for a thread that snaps cleanly and stays crisp out of the water — hard crack, 300-310F on a thermometer. Anything softer sets sticky and chewy rather than brittle.
- TreacleBlack treacle, the British by-product of cane refining. Unsulphured molasses is the closest substitute; blackstrap is more bitter and drier and will make a harsher toffee.
- Moist sugarVictorian "moist sugar" is unrefined or partly refined brown sugar, damp and clumping. Use light or dark brown sugar, packed.
- Quantities1 lb treacle is about 1 1/3 cups; 1 lb brown sugar about 2 1/4 cups packed; 1/2 lb butter is 2 sticks. Yield is roughly 2 lb of toffee.
- Buttering the pan firstNot fussiness — greasing the base before the sugar goes in reduces scorching at the hot spots and helps the mixture come together without catching.
- StirringStir gently until the sugar has dissolved and the mass is smooth, then leave it largely alone. Vigorous agitation of hot syrup encourages graining and a cloudy, sandy set.
- The tinA shallow, buttered tin roughly 9x13 in. gives a slab about 1/4 in. thick. Score it into squares while still warm and pliable, then break along the lines once fully cold.
- StoringToffee this dark is hygroscopic and will turn tacky in humid air. Wrap pieces individually in waxed paper and keep them airtight.
Everton toffee takes its name from Everton, now a district of Liverpool, where toffee-making is generally traced back to the eighteenth century; the name became a generic label for treacle toffee across Britain and North America long after any connection to the place had lapsed. The recipe belongs to the era when treacle was the cheap sweetener of the industrial north — a refinery by-product sold by the pound while white sugar remained comparatively dear. The cold-water test used here predates household thermometers and remained the standard method for judging sugar stages in domestic kitchens well into the twentieth century.