candy

Candy Making with Honey Part 2: touch

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To continue the candy making theme here we go…

Here (Instructables) is a fantastic discussion on using cold water to show what “stage” your sugar is at to decide when to take it off the heat. Honey doesn’t work the same way. Honey has three steps, soft ball, hard crack, and burnt.

These steps help you use the cold water test to get the texture of honey you want. Combines with the “sight” you get close to a consistent product every time you make candy.

You can also use ‘smell’, but once you smell the honey is burnt it is too late.

Henry Buttes in Dyets Dry Dinner* says “…ginger condite with honey, warms old mens bellies…it is very restorative.”

Ingredients

  • 1/4 cup honey
  • pinch of ginger, ground (or saffron, black pepper, cinnamon)
  • 1 bowl of really cold water.

Directions

  1. Warm a frying pan on medium. Place honey in frying pan and bring to a boil. Skim the surface of any impurities as you work, stirring continuously.
  2. You should notice the honey change from golden clear to a light brown at around 4-6 minutes. Drip a few drops of honey into your cold water. The honey makes a pale platelet that sinks to the bottom. If you touch it, and eat it, it is very soft and chewy. At this temp you get a sticky mess if you pour it out on your nonstick surface. Good for shaping or caramel.
  3. After 2-4 more minutes the honey will suddenly change darker.  Drip a few drops of honey into your cold water. The honey makes a darker hard platelet that floats on top of the cold water. If you touch it, and eat it, it is crunchy.
  4. Quickly add the spice and stir.
  5. Pour the mixture onto a non stick surface to cool.
  6. break apart to serve.

You can test your candy by dropping it in the water as you go to reassure yourself that it hasn’t burnt. It will go from hard crack to burn in about 30 seconds so its good to test frequently.

  • Found at Early English Books Online as a pdf of the original printing, or my transcribed (annotated and redacted) version on amazon.ca

 

Pynade or Chicken Candy

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Ever since I first cracked open the intimidating Take a Thousand Eggs or More by Cindy Renfrow I wanted to make some of the stranger dishes.

Pynade, is like peanut brittle but uses chicken and pine nuts instead of peanuts found in this book.

Most people make the version for lent, or without chicken. Chicken adds moisture so it is harder to get the sugars to the hard crack stage without burning–especially when using honey instead of sugar.

If you remove the dish from heat before the honey reaches 300F it is still a kind of sweet and (not very) sour chicken dish people seem to like so it is worth experimenting with.

Pynade. Take Hony & gode pouder Gyngere, & Galyngale, & Canelle, Pouder pepir, & graynys of parys, & boyle y-fere; than take kyrnelys of Pynotys & caste ther-to; & take chyconys y-sothe, & hew hem in grece, & caste ther-to, & lat sethe y-fere; & then lat droppe ther-of on a knyf; & if it cleuyth & wexyth hard, it ys y-now; & then putte it on a chargere tyl it be cold, & mace lechys, & serue with other metys; & if thou wolt make it in spycery, then putte non chykonys ther-to. Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books

 

Ingredients
* 2 Chicken breasts
* Oil for cooking
* 1 cup pine nuts
* 1 tsp galingale, ground
* 1 tsp ginger, ground
* 1 tsp cinnamon, ground
* Pinch black pepper, ground
* Pinch of grains of paradise, ground
* 1 cup honey

1) Fry chicken breasts in oil until cooked through, then chop chicken very small, and lie meat on cutting board to cool and drain. Too much moisture left in meat at this stage will change the dish.

2) In a dry skillet toast the pine nuts with the spices on a low heat.

3) Add chicken pieces and stir, coating the chicken liberally.

4) Pour honey into skillet and simmer, stirring constantly, until honey reaches just over 300 degrees or hard crack stage. The honey will change colour from golden to brown, and smell like candy.

5) Quickly pour honey mixture onto non-stick baking mat, or parchment paper, and let cool.

6) Finished product should look like “chicken brittle”, break into pieces to serve.