I cook a lot and often the lack of detail in old cookbooks is not a problem. I just intuitively can figure out the how to make the recipe. However, when I make candy, it tends to be hit or miss whether it turns out exactly right. These 1924 tips are helpful, but not very detailed. I also find some more recent tips very useful:
The Does and Don’t of Candy Making (Iowa State University Extension)
A Beginner’s Guide to Candy Making at Home (candymakingclub.com)
Candy Temperatures and Testing Your Candy Thermometer (The Spruce Eats)
I’ve been thinking about making fudge again, and I recognize some of these tips. I still have my mother’s high-sided candy-making pan, and I always follow her advice: never stir while cooking, use a candy thermometer, make sure you work by temperature, and when it starts to set up, move fast! Since moving to Texas, I’ve added “Never, ever try to make candy (or meringues) on a humid day.”
I like how you summarized your mother’s advice. They succinctly describe the most important things when it comes to making candy. I have a bad habit of double checking myself using the old method of dropping a little of the hot candy in cold water to figure out which stage it’s at (soft ball, hard ball), and then it never quite agrees with the candy thermometer so I need to make a decision about what to do.
I am amazed that the south is such a trove of Candy recipes and high humidity!!!
When I think about fudge, I think about my Aunt Jeanette’s. She made fudge a lot, and did it well. When we visited her house, there was always a three-tiered dish she put out with an assortment, and it was always wonderful. Now, my mother was the impatient one in candymaking, and she never used a thermometer, just the various blob in cold water tests. Thus, we all joke now that we were adults before we realized you didn’t eat fudge with a spoon…
There are some lovely old candy dishes. I hate to admit it, but I sometimes use the various cold water tests — but, as you noted, doing that has often gotten me into trouble.
My husband on the other hand….likes fudge cooked so hard it almost crystalizes…Cause that is the way his mama made it
Oh those childhood memories Becky!
My rookie mistake was making fudge without a candy thermometer. It ended up being fudge to put on ice cream.
I’ve made the same mistake – though I tend to overcook rather than undercook fudge and it ends up being crumbly. I think that there’s getting to be a theme here – It’s important to use a candy thermometer. 🙂
Yup
Good tips. I have a recipe from great grandma I make every year. I wonder in what year she found the recipe.
Old family recipes that get passed from generation to generation are so special.
Yes they are.
Love this information! The art of candy making – oh, so good!
Candy making is definitely an art. 🙂
so glad I found you. Following now.
Welcome – It’s nice to hear that you like this blog.
All good advice! My mother made fondant and it was good but there were some failures! She didn’t obviously have this cookbook!!!
Based on my experiences making candy, I think that a few failures are par for the course.
I liked the failures! Those were the ones we got to eat!