Candy Teacher (1921)

June 17, 2010 9:25 AM

"The most complete and up-to-date illustrated Candy Teacher that is out on the market, with complete instructions in the manufacture of all the different classes of candy made for the wholesale and retail trade." (Charles Apell, 1921)

First few pages are blank, and the index begins on page 462. You can flip back and forth by simply clicking on the page itself.

posted by gman (19 comments total)

Neat! And it's also downloadable in a variety of formats.
posted by bjrn at 9:27 AM on June 17, 2010

Neat. Thank you.
posted by kalessin at 9:27 AM on June 17, 2010

Wow. What a fun book!
posted by chocolatetiara at 9:31 AM on June 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

It's all blank, at least in Safari.
posted by Mcable at 9:33 AM on June 17, 2010

Never mind, it takes a while to load.
posted by Mcable at 9:34 AM on June 17, 2010

Any recipe that begins "Place in melting kettle 100 lbs of sugar, 50 lbs of corn syrup, 3 gallons of water" deserves our awe, if not necessarily our approval. That stuff will rot a load of teeth, I tell you what....
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:43 AM on June 17, 2010

All those open mixing drums surrounded by unprotected gears, pulleys and belts is giving me nightmares about finding multiple body parts in every box of chocolates.
posted by DU at 9:57 AM on June 17, 2010

What, you're not going to share?
posted by ardgedee at 9:57 AM on June 17, 2010

Place into mouth: 100lbs of sugar.
Place into vein: syringe full of insulin.
posted by blue_beetle at 10:28 AM on June 17, 2010

That equipment was built to last. In the early eighties, I spent a summer in the starch room of the Chocolate House-Milwaukee pulling the fucking lever of that fucking Racine Lightning Printer. Worked with a couple guys who lost fingers to the Dayton Ball beaters. (Heh, ball beaters, indeed.)
posted by klarck at 10:35 AM on June 17, 2010

"Illustrated Candy Teacher." Sometimes, some words just belong together.
posted by penduluum at 10:41 AM on June 17, 2010

Wow. This is great. I love old books, and books as objects, but I also like the idea of digital preservation and wider accessibility. This often creates a dissonance, as whenever I've tried to look at or read Project Gutenberg books, I just can't seem to do it. There's just something that seems off, and wrong, about reading some of these particular texts on a screen in HTML or plaintext form, using harsh standardized fonts that I associate with bad webpages and readme files. It didn't help that a couple of the texts I downloaded from gutenberg were badly formatted textdumps, which made it even less pleasant to read, and the lack of formatting felt like a violation of the original text. The way a text is formatted is an integral part of it. I had kind of given up on digital texts until I had a different means of reading them or the presentation improved. So seeing this was really refreshing for me, in a lot of ways.

Part of the reason I love old books is seeing the history, the difference in craftsmanship, the feel and the smell of the pages, the choice of fonts, the wonderful illustrations, just the way looking at the publishing date on the title page can set off the imagination in a way that just seeing it on a screen cannot. There's so much besides the text that a book contains. I can't bear to write in my own, but I love seeing the things scrawled in the margins of old books, or the long lost messages and dedications written in the title pages. All of that disappears with the digitization of text, and while I'm glad that so many more people can access it, I wish there was a better presentation of it.

So seeing this makes me really happy. I know many places have been scanning books, but I thought they were just converting most of them to text.

This is pretty much as good as I could hope for with a digital text. You still don't have the sensory input that you get from holding the actual thing, but everything else is so right. I hope they do this with more books.

I haven't been to the Internet Archive's book section in a long while, and this made me go dig through more to see what else they have and thus far it's fantastic.

Wow. Check out the wonderful illustrations in Abroad, a storybook from 1882!

Peruse a copy of Newton's Principia from 1846!

Goody Two-Shoes, 1888.

Little Lord Fauntleroy, 1886.

Cinderella from the late 1800's.

Kearton's Nature Pictures from 1910.

(Click on the title link at the top of the page to go back to the book's info page and for downloadable links.)

I can't get over how great this is.

I heart you, University of California Libraries. I heart you, Internet Archive.

I heart you, metafilter
posted by wander at 10:45 AM on June 17, 2010 [4 favorites]

I once had a temp job for two days loading trucks at a local candy factory (Vernell's on Westlake, for all you old Seattle hands).

The smells were so intense they had my stomach growling and leaping back and forth like some manic trained animal for nine solid hours. At the end of those days I think my insides were actually tired from unaccustomed muscular activity (my partner: "Your insides, tired? The way you eat? Give me a break.")

During that period of time I did the same thing at a local spice factory (Crescent Foods) and the effect wasn't a tenth as strong.

Beyond that, from Vernell's I remember this gleaming row of ~20 candy mixers with 20 gal. copper kettles shaped and tilted like little cement mixers. They were beautiful.
posted by jamjam at 10:52 AM on June 17, 2010

I would like a nougat bar, now, please.
posted by everichon at 10:55 AM on June 17, 2010

Nougat. Nougat nougat nougat. NOUGAT!
posted by Babblesort at 10:58 AM on June 17, 2010

Naturally I wondered if there was a recipe for Crunchy Frog or Spring Surprise. Very disappointing.
posted by pinky at 11:00 AM on June 17, 2010

Now I want to see A Young Lady's Illustrated Candy Teacher where the diagrams are done in the nice cross hatch line drawing style and are fully animated and interactive.

This was great. Thanks gman.
posted by Babblesort at 11:00 AM on June 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

This is fantastic. One of those FPP finds that makes me fall in love with Metafilter all over again.

Cook 10 lbs of corn syrup to 322 degrees then pour out on your ball beater.
posted by applemeat at 11:05 AM on June 17, 2010

A librarian friend of mine linked this to me last night saying 'please tell me you have a local copy at [one of the universities you have access to].' I was saddened to tell her I did not, nor did I, despite having once made 300 truffles and flown with them cross country once, currently have the facilities to make anything involving 100 lbs of sugar.

It does, however, remind me of the 'Girl's Handy Book' section that describes candymaking as something pleasant to do in the winter months. I am in absolute agreement.
posted by cobaltnine at 11:59 AM on June 17, 2010