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Cocoanut Caramels
2 tablespoonfuls glucose 1 cupful dessicated cocoanut 1 cupful milk 1 cupful cream 1 lb. brown sugar 3/4 cupful Crisco 1 teaspoonful rose extract 1 teaspoonful almond extract 1/4 teaspoonful salt Soak cocoanut in milk for twenty minutes, then put it into a saucepan with sugar, glucose, salt, and one-third of the Crisco, add second third of Crisco when it forms heavy thread, or registers 230° F., add third piece Candies of Crisco, cream and extracts, when it again reaches 230° F. When it reaches the hard ball stage or 250° F., turn at once into a Criscoed tin. Cut when half cold. When all are cut, wrap each caramel in waxed paper.
A straightforward boiled caramel, but the staged additions of fat are the whole method and the temperatures given are the only reliable guide.
- GlucoseConfectioner's glucose or corn syrup, used to inhibit crystallisation. Light corn syrup substitutes directly at 2 tablespoons.
- CriscoCrisco here is hydrogenated vegetable shortening, the product the book was written to promote. Unsalted butter gives a better flavour in caramel; if you use it, keep the 1/4 teaspoon salt or reduce it slightly.
- Desiccated cocoanutUnsweetened dried shredded coconut, not the sweetened flake sold for baking. Sweetened flake will push the batch noticeably sweeter.
- The staged fatThe recipe adds the shortening in three parts, bringing the mixture back to 230F between additions. It gives no reason; the likely purpose is to avoid dropping the temperature sharply and to keep the fat worked into the syrup rather than sitting on it. Adding it all at the start is a different method and may not incorporate as cleanly.
- Use a thermometerThe recipe's own figures are the instruction: 230F for the heavy-thread stage, 250F for the finish. The recipe calls 250F 'hard ball'; modern candy charts put that temperature at firm ball, and it gives a caramel that cuts cleanly and chews. A few degrees over and it firms up considerably.
- ScorchingBrown sugar, milk and cream together catch easily once past 230F. A heavy-bottomed pan and constant stirring near the end matter more here than in a plain sugar syrup.
- ExtractsA teaspoon each of rose and almond is assertive by current taste. Half quantities are closer to what a modern palate expects.
- Pan and yieldThe recipe says only 'a Criscoed tin'. An 8-inch square pan is a reasonable choice and would give a slab somewhere around three-quarters of an inch thick, cutting into roughly sixty one-inch pieces. Cut when half cool, as directed, and wrap individually or they will fuse.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was published by Procter & Gamble to teach cooks what to do with a fat that had no culinary tradition behind it: hydrogenated cottonseed oil, introduced in 1911 and unlike either butter or lard in behaviour. The candy chapter can be read as doing quiet argumentative work, since caramels were the sort of thing a household made with butter and cream, and showing shortening performing the same job in a boiled sugar syrup looks like a direct claim of equivalence. The rose-and-almond flavouring pairs a coconut caramel with the perfumed extracts common in American confectionery of the period, when rose water and bitter-almond flavour were, by many accounts, familiar presences in sweets. The temperatures printed alongside the old stage names -- thread, hard ball -- are often taken to reflect the gradual spread of the candy thermometer into home kitchens.