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Creamed Karo
This Boil one pint Karo until the mixture forms a short, thick thread-about ten minutes. Cool till it can be dented with the fingers and beat until thick and creamy. Use with waffles, griddle cakes or as a spread for bread.
A one-ingredient candy, essentially: corn syrup boiled to concentrate it, then beaten cold into an opaque spread. The whole thing turns on how far you take the boil and how still you leave it while it cools.
- KaroKaro is corn syrup, still sold under the same name. Use light (clear) syrup for a pale spread; dark Karo contains refiners' syrup and gives a molasses note and a browner colour.
- One pintTwo cups.
- "A short, thick thread"This is the old thread test: syrup dropped from a spoon falls in a heavy strand that breaks rather than spinning out long. On a thermometer that is somewhere around 230-235F, at the upper end of the thread stage and below the soft-ball range. Ten minutes is an estimate that depends entirely on your pan width; go by the test, not the clock.
- Use a deep panCorn syrup foams up hard as it approaches temperature. A three-quart saucepan for two cups of syrup is not excessive, and boiling over onto a burner is the main way this recipe goes wrong.
- Cooling is the hingeDo not stir, scrape or jostle the pan while it cools. Pour it out onto a heatproof slab or leave it in the pan undisturbed until it is about 110F — warm but no longer hot. Beating too early gives a thin, grainy syrup that never thickens; agitating it while hot does the same.
- Test with a spoon, not fingersThe original has you dent the mass with a finger. Hot sugar syrup clings and burns; press the surface with the back of a cool spoon instead, or touch the outside of the pan.
- It may not creamCorn syrup resists crystallising, which is why it is used to keep other candies smooth. Beaten after a hard boil it will go opaque and fondant-like, but the result can stay looser than the word "creamy" suggests. Beat with a wooden spoon or a stand mixer paddle until it lightens and loses its gloss.
- KeepingStore covered at room temperature. Refrigeration makes it stiff and sullen; a few seconds of warming and a stir brings it back to spreading consistency.
Karo was introduced by the Corn Products Refining Company in the early 1900s, and like other branded pantry staples of that era it arrived accompanied by small promotional cookbooks explaining what the unfamiliar bottle was for. American cooks already knew molasses, maple syrup and homemade sugar syrup; corn syrup had to argue its case, and it did so on price, on keeping quality, and on the fact that it would not crystallise in the jar. Recipes like this one show the manufacturer pushing a single ingredient as far as it would go, past the obvious uses on waffles and griddle cakes and into territory usually occupied by butter, jam or boiled fondant. The technique itself is straight confectionery practice: concentrate a sugar solution by boiling, cool it undisturbed, then beat it so that it sets in fine crystals rather than coarse ones. That method was old and well understood; applying it to a bottled industrial syrup was the new part.