Why Did Old Candy Recipes Put Paraffin Wax in Chocolate?

You’re going through an old candy recipe and everything seems perfectly normal.

Chocolate. Sugar. Butter.

And then:

Paraffin wax.

Wax?

As in the stuff candles are made from?

That was my reaction when I opened a 1978 copy of Farm Journal’s Friendly Food Gifts From Your Kitchen and found a recipe for Angel Food Candy, described as a type of sponge candy.

The candy itself wasn’t particularly strange. Corn syrup, brown sugar and baking soda are used to make the airy, crunchy center.

Then came the chocolate coating.

Along with semi-sweet chocolate and butter, the recipe calls for a 2½-by-3-inch piece of paraffin wax, cut up.

And there was no question about what they intended you to do with it. The directions have the cook melt the paraffin right along with the chocolate and butter before dipping the pieces of candy.

So why on earth were people putting wax in chocolate?

The Wax Actually Had a Job

Paraffin helped solve several annoyances faced by home candy makers.

Added to melted chocolate, it could help the coating:

• harden more firmly
• stay solid at room temperature
• develop a smoother, shinier finish
• make dipping candies easier

In other words, Mabel wasn’t absentmindedly raiding the candle drawer. The wax was there for a reason.

Paraffin was particularly handy for home cooks who weren’t tempering chocolate. Properly tempered chocolate develops its own shine, firmness and characteristic snap, but tempering requires careful heating and cooling.

A little paraffin offered an easier route to a firm chocolate coating.

Food-industry sources still describe paraffin as having uses that include helping candy coatings remain firm and glossy. The FDA also continues to list paraffin wax in its food-substance inventory, with technical functions including processing aid, surface-finishing agent and texturizer. Specific permitted uses are governed by food regulations.

This Wasn’t Some Recipe From 1882

That’s what makes the Farm Journal recipe especially interesting.

The cookbook was published in 1978.

This wasn’t an obscure nineteenth-century household manual telling cooks to throw mysterious substances into a pot over the woodstove. It was a mainstream American cookbook published by Doubleday, with recipes selected by the food editors of Farm Journal.

And it matter-of-factly expected a home cook to have paraffin available for candy making.

Paraffin had long been familiar in American kitchens for another reason, too: home canning. Melted paraffin was once poured over jams and jellies as a seal.

That old preservation method is no longer recommended. Modern food-preservation guidance warns that paraffin seals can shrink or develop openings that allow molds and yeasts to grow.

But for generations of home cooks, seeing a block of kitchen paraffin wasn’t nearly as bizarre as it looks to many of us today.

Not Just Any Candle Wax

This is an important distinction if you’ve found paraffin listed in an old family recipe.

Do not assume ordinary candle-making wax is interchangeable with paraffin intended for food use.

Craft and decorative candle waxes can contain fragrances, dyes or other additives that were never intended to be eaten.

Old cooks using paraffin in candy were working with highly refined paraffin products sold for household and kitchen purposes. Modern food regulations also specify particular types and standards for paraffin used in permitted food applications.

So an old recipe saying “paraffin” does not mean you should grab a candle from the junk drawer and start shaving it into the double boiler.

Do You Need Paraffin to Make the Recipe Today?

No.

Modern candy makers have much easier options.

Confectionery coatings and products often sold as candy coating or almond bark are designed to melt easily and harden without traditional chocolate tempering.

Or you can use real chocolate and temper it properly, which produces a firm, glossy coating without adding wax.

Paraffin certainly worked — which explains why it appears in so many older candy recipes — but it isn’t necessary to reproduce the basic idea today.

Another Little Piece of Kitchen History

This is exactly why I love old cookbooks.

A recipe can look completely ordinary until one ingredient suddenly reveals how differently kitchens once worked.

In 1978, Farm Journal could tell readers to cut up a chunk of paraffin, melt it into chocolate and start dipping candy without stopping to explain what paraffin was or why anyone would have it.

Apparently they assumed you already knew.

Forty-eight years later, it’s the ingredient most likely to make us stop halfway down the page and say:

“You want me to put WHAT in the chocolate?”