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Pulled Peppermints
Boil together three cupfuls of granulated sugar, one-and a half cupfuls of water and one-quarter of a teaspoonful of tartaric acid until on trying in cold water it will almost crack, but if held a moment can be rolled into a hard ball. Do not stir, but pour into a buttered dish to cool. As soon as it can be handled, add one teaspoonful of extract of peppermint and pull it white, then cut in sticks.
A straightforward pulled-sugar candy, but everything depends on reading the syrup correctly and working fast once it is cool enough to handle.
- The hinge: cook to 260-265FThe hinge: read the cold-water test -- "almost crack, but can be rolled into a hard ball" sits at the top of the hard-ball range, somewhere around 260-270F on a modern thermometer. Undercooked, the sticks will sag and stay tacky; overcooked, the mass gets glassy and harder to pull.
- Tartaric acidSold as a dry powder with baking supplies or through winemaking suppliers. It inverts part of the sugar so the syrup resists crystallising during pulling. Cream of tartar is a different compound and works less strongly; lemon juice adds water and flavour you do not want here.
- Do not stir, and wash the sides downThe instruction to leave the syrup alone is the difference between candy and a pan of grainy sugar. Brush the inside of the pan above the syrup line with a wet pastry brush early in the boil so no stray crystals seed the batch.
- Buttered dish means a heavy oneButtered dish -- a buttered marble slab or a thick metal sheet pan works well; avoid glass. Pour without scraping the last of the syrup out of the pot.
- Add the peppermint late and off the surfaceAdd the peppermint late -- one teaspoon of extract is a strong dose, which is correct for this candy. Pour it into a depression in the cooling mass rather than onto the hottest edges, so less of the volatile oil is lost.
- Pulling whiteButter your hands, or wear food-safe gloves under cotton ones, and fold and stretch the rope repeatedly. The whitening is trapped air, not a chemical change, and it takes several minutes of steady work; it takes two people for a batch this size if you are new to it.
- Cut with oiled scissorsSnip the drawn rope into sticks while it is still faintly warm and pliable. Once fully cold it will shatter rather than cut.
- HumidityPulled sugar draws water out of the air. Work on a dry day and store the sticks in an airtight tin, layered in waxed paper, or they will go sticky within hours.
- YieldThree cupfuls of sugar gives well over a pound of finished candy, enough for a few dozen short sticks depending on how thin you pull the rope.
Pulled sugar is one of the oldest confectioner's techniques to reach the home kitchen: aerating a hot syrup by repeated folding turns it opaque, satiny and white, which is why the old candy books are often said to speak of pulling molasses to a cream colour, or peppermint white. By the end of the nineteenth century granulated sugar was cheap and reliable enough that American households appear to have taken on work that had belonged to professional candy shops. Peppermint was a common flavouring in part because peppermint sticks were already established as a Christmas and pharmacy sweet. The tartaric acid suggests this is a knowing recipe rather than a folk one: a small dose of acid inverts some of the sucrose so the mass can be worked for minutes without crystallising, generally understood as the same principle behind commercial stick candy of the period.