JESSIE MILLER’S RECIPE FOR CHRISTMAS CANDY

From 1889:

Jessie is the fourteen-year-old daughter of the attorney general and is especially proud of the candy because the President has eaten it and the boys at school where her brother is say it is the best they have tasted. No one will be able to make it, as Miss Jessie says most of the recipe is in her head. This is the way she tells it:

A cup of brown sugar, a cup of black molasses and a big piece of butter. Don’t use confectioners sugar or it wont be sticky enough and will taste just like the kind you buy. Try it by blowing through a curled broom splint and by tasting. It is two kinds of candy. If you pull it, it is taffy. If you don’t, it’s butter scotch.