Home › Candy Making › Peppermints
Peppermints
Boil one pint of granulated sugar and one cupful of water without stirring, until a little dropped into cold water can be rolled into a very soft ball. Take from the fire, add ten drops of essential oil of peppermint and stir slowly till the syrup becomes cloudy, then drop from a spoon on paraffine or buttered paper.
This is a simple crystallized fondant — sugar syrup cooked to soft ball, then agitated until it clouds and sets opaque. The whole recipe turns on two moments: the temperature you pull it at, and how long you stir before dropping.
- A pint of sugarSugar was routinely measured by volume in 1900. A pint is 2 cups, about 14 oz or 400 g, against 1 cup (8 fl oz) water.
- "A very soft ball"What is now called the soft-ball stage, conventionally about 235-240F on a thermometer; the qualifier "very soft" suggests the lower end of that range. Cooked much higher the patties turn hard and crumbly; much lower and they may never firm up.
- Why you must not stirStirring the boiling syrup seeds premature crystals and gives a gritty candy. Cover the pan for the first few minutes so steam washes crystals off the sides, or brush the sides down with a wet pastry brush.
- Essential oil, not extractOil of peppermint is several times stronger than the alcohol-based peppermint extract sold today. Ten drops of oil is what the recipe calls for; if you substitute extract you will need considerably more -- ratios vary by brand, so add it cautiously to taste, and off the heat, since alcohol flashes off.
- "Stir slowly till the syrup becomes cloudy"This is the hinge. Stir steadily until the syrup loses its glassy shine and turns opaque and slightly thick, then stop; carried much further it will set solid in the pan.
- Work fast at the dropOnce cloudy the mixture sets quickly. Have the paper ready and drop teaspoonfuls in one pass; if it stiffens, a few seconds back over low heat will loosen it.
- Paraffine paperWaxed parchment or a silicone mat. Buttered paper works as the recipe says, but leaves a film on the underside.
- Yield and keepingThe recipe gives no yield; expect several dozen small patties. Let them dry an hour, then store airtight -- fondant is hygroscopic and goes sticky in humid air.
Peppermint drops of this kind were among the oldest and cheapest of commercial sweets, sold by weight in confectioners' shops and by street vendors through the nineteenth century, and they were a standard piece of home candy making by the turn of the century. Granulated sugar had become cheap and reliably pure, thermometers were beginning to appear in domestic kitchens, and essential oils of peppermint, wintergreen, lemon and clove were sold in small bottles at the druggist. Peppermint, Mentha x piperita, was a commercial crop in New York and Michigan, distilled for oil rather than sold as a herb. The candy's texture depends on the same controlled crystallization that underlies fondant, and instructions like "stir till the syrup becomes cloudy" were the pre-thermometer language for a process cooks judged by hand.