Today is National Candy Day, which sounds like the sort of holiday my grandkids can definitely get behind. Their current favorites are gummy candies, of any shape and flavor, even the sour ones.

What sort of candies might have been enjoyed for Candy Day, if it was a thing during the Regency? Here some possible options.

Pralines

PRALINED NUTS

TAK E a pound of Spanish nuts (Spanish peanuts most likely) without their shells, which you put in a pan with as much sugar, and do as we said for the almonds ; you may give a little boiling to the almonds if you chuse to take off their skin, but then the sugar does not stick on them so well ; observe, like wise, that you may, if you please, make all sorts of praline with clarified sugar, which you proportion in equal quantity to the weight of fruit you want to praline ; our work will be certainly so much the finer, but generally they use loaf sugar.

(Borella)

Dragees

Violet Dragees

TAKE one ounce of gumdragon (Tragacanth), which you set at soaking in half a pint of water, for twenty four hours ; then you pass it through a cloth, and put it in the mortar, first pound it alone to make it whiten, then you will add to it some powdered sugar, and continue to pound it in ‘adding sugar from time to time, till your paste rises very high and stick to your pounder.

When yen have it thus well pounded, and you see it then join to it your violet powder, and ‘take a bit with your fingers, which you roll and dress of the bigness of half a corn of rice ; when you have employed thus that bit of your paste which you cut off, you may put the other in a pot to keep it moist, and that which you worked, as we said, you place in the stove to dry, keeping it stirring for fear it should stick one to another.

The fire must be very gentle, when they are well dried you put them in the pre serving pan over a slow fire; when they are warmed yon put with a spoon some clarified sugar in the preserving pan, and stir them continually till they, are dry. then add another spoonful of sugar, dry it again, and repeat so doing till your dragees are brought to the size that you would have them;

(Borella)

Barley Sugar

678. Lavender Barley Sugar.

Boil a pint of syrup to caromel, when nearly done add a tea-spoonful of prepared cochineal, to colour, and twenty drops of oil of lavender; let it boil half a minute in it, pour it in lengths on a marble slab, oiled, and twist it.

(Cooke)

Drops

818. Peppermint Drops.

Take three spoonfuls of water; stir in it as much fine sifted treble-refined sugar as will make it into a paste, just to drop off the spoon; put it in the drop (Cooke)

699. Black Currant Drops.

Pick and bake them in jars till tender; rub through a fine hair sieve ; dry it off in a flat earthen pan gently, to the consistence of a thick paste, frequently stirring;i t may be done by evaporating the juice in a cool oven or drying stove; when in a solid paste, add the pro-portion of a quarter of a pound of sifted sugar, to one pound of paste stirred in well, and laid out on pewter plates in drops, or spread all over it thick, and dried in the drying stove, and cut in square pieces.

Note.—^All fruit pastes are made in this way.

(Cooke)

COFFEE PASTILS.

Take half a pound of pounded loaf sugar, have about the quantity of two dishes of coffee made with water, which put in your sugar, and mix well till you see it makes a royal paste a little thick,  that you may take it upon a knife; then take half a sheet of paper and cover it with little, round, and flat drops, which we call pastils, of the size of a farthing; place it in the stove with a slow fire till it is quite dry, and take it off from the paper; you may add to it, if you chuse, some of the skin of the lemon rasped or grated, but not chipped; for as it is a melting pastil, some of the bits would remain in the mouth, which is not quite so well. (Glasse)

COFFEE-CREAM BOMBOONS.

T A.K E ‘ about a pint of coffee made with water, put in it a pound of loaf sugar, set it on the fire, and boil it to the ninth degree, then you add a full pint of double cream, and let it boil again, keeping continually stirring till it comes to caramel height ;

to know when it is come to that point, you must have a bason of water by you, dip your finger in it, and put it quickly in your sugar, then in the water again to remove the sugar, which will have stuck to it; take a bit of it in your teeth, if it is hard in its crackling take it off, it is to the height required ;

pour it upon a tin plate, and proceed as we directed for the lemon bomboons. When it is warm you may cut it in little squares, or lozenges or any other shapen pastiles, and draw a few strokes over them with a knife. (Borella)

References

Borella. The Court and Country Confectioner: Or, the House-keepers Guide ; to a More Speedy, Plain, and Familiar Method of Understanding the Whole Art of Confectionary … A New Edition. To Which Is Added, a Dissertation on the Different Species of Fruits, and the Art of Distilling … By Mr. Borella ..London: Printed for G. Riley, 1772.

Cooke, John Conrade. Cookery and confectionery.   London : W. Simpkin, and R. Marshall, 1824.

Glasse, Hannah. The Complete Confectioner.  London: West and Hughes, 1800.

Nutt,  Frederick. The Complete Confectioner ; Or, the Whole Art of Confectionary: … By a Person, Late an Apprentice to the Well-known Messrs. Negri and Witten ..London: Printed for the Author, 1807.