Crisco Drops
1/2 cupful golden syrup 4 tablespoonfuls Crisco 1/4 cupful water 1/4 teaspoonful salt ½ teaspoonful vanilla extract Put Crisco, golden syrup, water, and salt into saucepan and boil until it is almost brittle when tested in cold water, or 290° F., then add vanilla. Allow to cool down, and then drop on to Criscoed tin. Sufficient for twenty drops.
A two-minute candy that is really a fat-enriched syrup toffee: no granulated sugar at all, so it will not go grainy, but the temperature is everything.
- The hinge is 290°FThis sits at the top of the soft-crack range, just short of hard crack. Undercooked, the drops stay sticky and slump on the tray; much over and they go brittle and darken. Use a calibrated candy thermometer and read it with the bulb in the syrup, not touching the pan.
- Cold-water testIf working without a thermometer, a spoonful dropped into ice water should form threads that are firm and only just bend before snapping — the book's "almost brittle."
- Cupful and tablespoonfulA cupful is 8 fl oz. Four tablespoonfuls of Crisco is 1/4 cup, about 50 g. The whole batch is small, which means it heats fast — a 1- to 2-quart heavy pan is right, and it needs watching from about 260°F on.
- Golden syrupLyle's or any partly inverted cane syrup. It is not interchangeable with corn syrup in flavor; corn syrup will work chemically but tastes flat by comparison. Honey is a poor substitute: it darkens and can catch at these temperatures.
- Crisco todayThe 1913 product was hydrogenated cottonseed oil, and by most accounts firmer than the reformulated shortening now sold under the name. Any solid vegetable shortening behaves the same way here; butter will work but its milk solids will brown at this temperature.
- "Criscoed tin"A baking sheet wiped with shortening. Parchment or a silicone mat is easier and the drops release cleanly.
- Cooling before droppingLet the pan stand off the heat until the syrup thickens enough to hold a mound — a minute or two. Too hot and it spreads into flat discs; too cool and it will not leave the spoon. The vanilla goes in after boiling, which limits how much of it flashes off.
- Yield and keepingTwenty small drops. Store airtight; these are hygroscopic and turn tacky within hours in humid weather.
The Story of Crisco (1913), with recipes by Marion Harris Neil, was Procter & Gamble's book-length argument for a product that had gone on sale only in 1911: a solid, shelf-stable shortening made from hydrogenated cottonseed oil, pitched as a replacement for both lard and butter. That commercial purpose explains why Crisco turns up in a boiled sugar candy at all — the point of the page is to show the fat in yet another role. The candy itself is an old form, a syrup toffee dropped rather than cut, and it depends on the invert sugars in golden syrup to keep the mass smooth without the beating or cream of tartar a granulated-sugar candy would need. British-style golden syrup measured in cupfuls is a curious note in an American promotional book, though the vocabulary alone tells us little more than that.