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Lemon Candy
Put into a kettle three and one-half pounds of sugar, one and one-half pints of water, and one teaspoon of cream of tartar. Let it boil until it becomes brittle when dropped in cold water; when sufficiently done take off the fire and pour in a shallow dish which has been greased with a little butter. When this has cooled so that it can be handled, add a teaspoon of tartaric acid and the same quantity of extract of lemon, and work them into the mass. The acid must be fine and free from lumps. Work this in until evenly distributed, and no more, as it will tend to destroy the transparency of the candy. This method may be used for preparing all other candies, as pine-apple, etc., using different flavours.
A plain hard-candy syrup boiled to the crack stage, then flavoured and acidulated off the heat. The one thing that governs success is temperature: a thermometer replaces the cold-water test entirely.
- Temperature, not guesswork"Brittle when dropped in cold water" is the hard-crack stage, 300-310F (149-154C). Below about 295F the candy stays tacky and will weep in humid weather; taken much beyond the hard-crack range it begins to colour and caramelise.
- The quantitiesThree and a half pounds of sugar is about 8 cups; a pint and a half of water is 3 cups. This is a large batch: the water boils off, so the finished candy weighs not far short of the three and a half pounds of sugar. Halving it works without adjustment, though a smaller volume of syrup reaches temperature faster and needs closer watching.
- Why cream of tartar is thereIt inverts a portion of the sucrose as the syrup boils, which discourages the whole mass from crystallising into an opaque grainy block. A teaspoon in this quantity is right; more will make the candy sticky and slow to set.
- Add the acid off the heatTartaric acid put into boiling syrup accelerates inversion badly and gives a soft, gummy sweet. Wait until the poured sheet has cooled to where it can be handled, as the recipe says. Sift the acid first, since undissolved lumps give sour spots.
- "Work them in, and no more"This is the hinge. Each fold and stretch introduces air and starts crystallisation; overworking turns clear candy cloudy and finally chalky. Distribute the flavouring with as few passes as will do it.
- Extract of lemonModern lemon extract is alcohol-based and much of it flashes off in the residual heat, so the flavour lands lighter than expected. Lemon oil, used at about a quarter the volume, holds up better.
- The dish and the handlingUse a rimmed metal sheet or marble slab, buttered, not a glass baking dish, which can crack under 300F syrup. The cooled edges will be workable while the centre is still scalding; wear gloves and fold the edges inward.
- Cutting and keepingScore into pieces with oiled shears while the sheet is still pliable, then snap when cold. Hard candy is hygroscopic: wrap the pieces or store them airtight, or they will go sticky within a day or two.
Nineteenth-century American confectionery manuals treated hard candy as a single technique with interchangeable flavourings, which is exactly the claim made in the last line here: pineapple, wintergreen, peppermint and lemon differ only in the bottle you reach for. The recipe belongs to the period when cream of tartar and tartaric acid were staple household chemicals, sold by the druggist alongside baking soda and used for everything from raising bread to setting jelly; tartaric acid gave the sharpness now more often supplied by citric acid, which was expensive until commercial fermentation methods arrived in the twentieth century. The Home Cook Book (Chicago, 1874) was compiled from contributions by local women and sold to benefit the Home for the Friendless, one of the earliest American charity cookbooks, and it belongs to a moment when pulled and cast sweets were made at home for parties and holidays rather than bought.