Candy Thermometer

The candy thermometer did not become available to most housekeepers until the early 1900s when appeared in advertisements and recipes. The professional confectioner's thermometers were longer and more expensive. On the right is a patent from 1878 for a glass encased one, and on the left from 1874 for rock candy with the thermometer [B] sticking out to read the scale.

"Until the last few years, [1914] for the amateur, the only tests to determine the completion of cooking have been known as " thread," "soft ball," "hard ball," "crack" and " hard crack." The professional confectioner has long been able, by the use of a thermometer, to determine just how hot his candy was and to remove it from the heat at exactly the right moment. His thermometer, however, was not only too expensive for the amateur, but also too long to be used except in a large vat." [Candy-making revolutionized: confectionery from vegetables. Mary Elizabeth Hall NY: 1914]

An interesting line of patents involved combining thermometers and stirrers as in the following two examples from 1880 and 1904. In the first, BF Adams stated that..."In the manufacture of confectionery... it is necessary for the attendant to stir the liquid continually to prevent it from burning, and also to observe the temperature of the same. It was heretofore been customary to use one hand for holding the stirring spoon or spatual, and the other hand for holding a Fahrenheit thermometer in the liquid."

"There are now on the market, however, thermometers that the amateur confectioner or small manufacturer can use to advantage. Even when hardware dealers do not keep the thermometers in stock, they can - and will — order them from their jobbers. The instruments, of which there are several makes, are about nine inches long, and sell for from one dollar to two dollars and fifty cents. Most of these instruments register from about eighty degrees to three hundred and eighty degrees Fahrenheit...." [Candy-making revolutionized: confectionery from vegetables. Mary Elizabeth Hall NY: 1914]

The following from: The Art of Candy Making... compiled by Dona MacKenzie Synder. Dayton, Ohio: Helath Pub Co, 1915
"Of all the tools for making candy, the candy thermometer is the most important. ... Candy thermometers cost from one to three dollars, and can usually be purchased at any good candy supply house or at a good hardware store. If it is not possible to secure a good thermometer in your city, one can be secured from The Health Publishing Company, Main and Fourth Streets, Dayton, Ohio.

Before using the thermometer the first time, test it in boiling water. The mercury should stand at exactly 212° when the water boils, unless the altitude is several thousand feet above sea level, which makes the boiling point lower.

Always use a kettle proportionate in size to the amount of sugar being boiled. The syrup must be deep enough in the kettle to cover the bulb of the thermometer; otherwise it will not register correctly. It will not break the thermometer to place it in the syrup just after it begins to boil, unless it has been in a cold room.

When making candy it pays to watch it closely, to read your thermometer correctly, and to remove the syrup from the fire the moment the thermometer registers the correct degree."

Small thread 230°-236°

Long thread 240°-245°

Softball 244°-246°

Hardball 250°

Very hard ball 280°

Brittle 300°

Coloring point 315°

©2010 Patricia Bixler Reber
hearthcook.com

Soup Tureen

Whether silver or part of a china set, the tureen is a glorious piece for the table. During the Federal period it was generally placed at the bottom end of the table for the first course with the fish platter on the top. If there are many guests, two soups may be served, with one at each end. The other serving dishes, matching in size and shape across the table or on the diagonal, are placed on the table but remain covered. [see diagram from Frazer 1791, 1820 and Briggs 1794 below right] A few authors, such as Mrs. Parkes [see below] wrote to put it at the top. Once the soup has been served and finished, the bowls and tureen are removed and the 'remove' put in its place. Then all the other dishes are uncovered and the first course continues. The picture is by Mary Ellen Best in 1838.
When the dinner is on the table let the plates be put round, one for each person; let the soupplates be all put at the bottom of the table, a little to the left hand of the person who helps it, and close to the tureen; this will be more convenient than putting the soup-plates right in front, both to you and the person who serves. ... As soon as the company are seated, if there is soup, take the cover off; if there be only fish at the top and a joint at the bottom, remove the cover from off the fish and the sauce-boat which belongs to it.

If there is any remove for the fish or soup, ring the bell, that it may be in readiness...Before you remove the fish and soup from off the table, take the small tray with a clean knife-cloth in it, hold it in your left hand, and take the fish-knife and soup-ladle off with the right; be careful in doing it; hold the tray as near as you can, that you may not dirty the cloth. As soon as the removes are put on the table, uncover all the dishes...
Cosnett, Thomas. The Footman's Directory, London: 1823

Nor, unless the party is a large one, is it as usual as it was to have two dishes of fish, and two tureens of soup. One of each, for a party of nine or ten is thought enough, the soup is placed at the top of the table, the fish at the bottom.
Parkes, Mrs. Wm. Domestic Duties. London, NY 1829

©2009 Patricia Bixler Reber
hearthcook.com

Twelfth Night Cakes

The engraving, which shows some cooking implements, is from Chamber's The Book of Days, 1869: "The sketch above is copied from an old French print, executed by J. Mariatte, representing Le Roi de la Fève (the King of the Bean) at the moment of his election, and preparing to drink to the company." The following image, with the cake, is from the Colonial Williamsburg site: Twelfth Night. 1794 broadside.

For more pictures and information go to my website: Twelfth Night - New Orleans King Cake or Twelfth Night Cake

New Year's Cookies

New York Cookies
Take a half-pint or a tumbler full of cold water, and mix it with half a pound of powdered white sugar. Sift three pounds of flour into a large pan, and cut up in it a pound of butter; rub the butter very fine into the flour. Add a grated nutmeg, and a tea-spoonful of powdered cinnamon, with a wine glass of rose water. Work in the sugar, and make the whole into a stiff dough, adding, if necessary, a little cold water. Dissolve a tea-spoonful of pearl-ash in just enough of warm water to cover it, and mix it in at the last.

Take the lump of dough out of the pan, and knead it on the paste-board till it becomes quite light. Then roll it out rather more than half an inch thick, and cut it into square cakes with a jagging iron or with a sharp knife. Stamp the surface of each with a cake print. Lay them in buttered pans, and bake them of a light brown in a brisk oven. They are similar to what are called New Year's cakes, and will keep two or three weeks. In mixing the dough, you may add three table-spoonfuls of carraway seeds.
Eliza Leslie. Directions for Cookery, Phila: 1840

In 1857 Leslie included a slightly different recipe using soda and tataric acid, and wrote:
"The bakers in New York ornament these cakes, with devices or pictures raised by a wooden stamp. They are good plain cakes for children."
Miss Leslie's New Cookery Book. Eliza Leslie, Phila: 1857.

New Year Cake.
Mix together three pounds of flour, a pound and a half of sugar, and three-quarters of a pound of butter; dissolve a tea-spoonful of salæratus in enough new milk to wet the flour; mix them together; grate in a nutmeg, or the peel of a lemon; roll them out, cut them in shapes, and bake.
Elizabeth Ellicott Lea. Domestic Cookery. Baltimore: 1851

Several Hudson Valley NY authors, including Washington Irving, included the cookies in their fiction.

In Salmagundi; or, The whimwhams & opinions of Launcelot Langstaff, Irving wrote "New Year was celebrated with great festivity during that golden age of our city, when the reins of government were held by the renowned Rip Van Dam, who always did honor to the season by seeing out the old year; a ceremony which consisted in plying his guests with bumpers, until not one of them was capable of seeing. ... In his days, according to my grandfather, first were invented these notable cakes, hight new-year-cookies, which originally were impressed on one side with the honest burly countenance of the illustrious Rip; and on the other with that of the noted St. Nicholas, vulgarly called Santa Claus... These cakes are to this time given on the first of January to all visitors, together with a glass of cherry-bounce, or raspberry-brandy."

Rip Van Winkle, first published in 1819, Irving claimed to come from the research of Diedrich Knickerbocker whose "memory may be appreciated by ... certain biscuit bakers, who have gone so far as to imprint his likeness on their new year's cakes, and have thus given him a chance for immortality, almost equal to the being stamped on a Waterloo Medal, or a Queen Anne's farthing."

A story The Baker's Dozen relates that "Baas [Boss] Volckert Jan Pietersen Van Amsterdam kept a bake-shop in Albany, and lives in history as the man who invented New Year cakes....on the last night of 1654..." encountered an old woman who demanded a dozen New Year's cookies. He sold her twelve, but she kept insisting on one more making a dozen.
Myths and Legends of our own Land. Charles Skinner. 1896