Name: Spun Sugar
Ingredients: 2 pounds sugar; 1 pint water

Spun Sugar

Ingredients

2 pounds sugar
1 pint water

Directions

Prepare

In a kettle, combine sugar and water. Heat until the mixture reaches 276°F (135°C).
Use just enough water to dissolve the sugar; avoid adding excess water to maintain color.
Once boiling, cover the kettle to let steam clean the sides.
Remove the cover when the mixture reaches 276°F (135°C) and set the kettle on a barrel.
Prepare two newspapers on the floor and place a clean, empty sugar barrel in the center.

Spin the sugar

Using an egg whip or several kitchen forks tied together, dip into the sugar mixture.
Quickly swing the forks or egg whip back and forth over the barrel until the sugar starts to darken.
At that point, discard any darkened sugar and form the spun sugar as desired.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Sugar: Forms the hard candy base and, once cooled into fine threads, the spun sugar structure.
Water: Dissolves the sugar so it can be heated evenly into a clear syrup.

The step that matters

Remove the cover at 276°F (135°C) and watch for darkening. Steam from the covered boil washes sugar crystals off the kettle sides, preventing grainy crystallization. Once the syrup darkens, it has begun to caramelize and take on a burnt flavor, so darkened sugar must be discarded.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.