A Little bit of food history: At approximately 12:40 p.m. on January 15, 1919, in Boston’s Industrial North End, a fifty-five foot high steel storage tank containing more than two million gallons of molasses exploded, unleashing an immense wave of thick, viscous goo that swept through the city streets as fast as 35 miles per hour.
The wave – initially thirty feet high, according to some bystanders – exerted enough force “to break the girders of the adjacent Boston Elevated Railway’s Atlantic Avenue structure and lift a train off its tracks.” The force of the blast and the ensuing tsunami also overturned dozens of cars and trucks in its path and “demolished several nearby buildings, including a fire station which was crushed by a huge chunk of the steel tank.”
Witnesses later stated that, as the tank collapsed, there was a loud rumbling sound, like a machine gun, and that “the ground shook as if a train were passing by.” In his book, Dark Tide, Stephen Puleo described the disaster this way:
Molasses, waist deep, covered the street and swirled and bubbled about the wreckage. Here and there struggled a form — whether it was animal or human being was impossible to tell. Only an upheaval, a thrashing about in the sticky mass, showed where any life was…Horses died like so many flies on sticky fly-paper. The more they struggled, the deeper in the mess they were ensnared. Human beings — men and women — suffered likewise.
The next morning, the Boston Evening Globe ran a front-page story based on eyewitness accounts taken on that terrible day:
Fragments of the great tank were thrown into the air, buildings in the neighborhood began to crumple up as though the underpinnings had been pulled away from under them, and scores of people in the various buildings were buried in the ruins, some dead and others badly injured.
In all, more than 150 people were injured and 21 children and adults were killed, mostly by crushing or asphyxiation. Fueled by the intense anti-immigrant sentiments that swept through the United States during the post-World War I Red Scare, owners of the distillery tried to pin the disaster on Italian anarchists, claiming that they had bombed the tank because they knew that the molasses was intended to be fermented to produce ethyl alcohol, a key component in the manufacturing of munitions at the time.
Although the exact cause of the disaster was never determined, no evidence of sabotage was ever found and experts generally attributed it to unseasonably warm temperatures combined with structural defects and poor maintenance of the tank.
More than one hundred lawsuits were filed against the owners of the tank, and litigation dragged on for six years, during which 3,000 witnesses testified. In the end, the court ruled for the plaintiffs and ordered the company to pay nearly a million dollars in damages - a “bittersweet victory for survivors of one of the strangest disasters in American history.”
FOOD FACT: Molasses was once used in the United States as the primary sweetener in cooking and baking. According to the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink, New England colonists also used molasses “as an ingredient in brewing birch beer and molasses beer and in distilling rum.” In the early 1700s, “rum made in New England became an essential element in a highly profitable Triangular Trade across the Atlantic. The colonists exported rum to West Africa in trade for slaves; the ships brought the slaves from Africa to the French West Indies, trading them for more molasses and sugar; these products were then shipped to New England to make more rum....When the cost of refined sugar dropped at the end of the nineteenth century...molasses lost its role as an important sweetener in the American diet.”
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup light corn syrup
2 teaspoons cider vinegar
3/4 cup molasses
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
Grease a 15-in. x 10-in. x 1-in. pan with 1 tablespoon butter; set aside. In a heavy saucepan, combine sugar, corn syrup and vinegar. Cook over low heat until sugar is dissolved, stirring frequently. Increase heat to medium; cook until a candy thermometer reads 245 degrees F (firm-ball stage), stirring occasionally. Add molasses and remaining butter. Cook, uncovered, until a candy thermometer reads 260 degrees F (hard-ball stage), stirring occasionally. Remove from the heat. Add baking soda; beat well.
Pour into prepared pan. Let stand for 5 minutes or until cool enough to handle. Butter fingers; quickly pull candy until firm by pliable (color will be light tan). When candy is ready for cutting, pull into a 1/2-in. rope. Cut into 1-in. pieces. Wrap each in waxed paper or colored candy wrappers.
1 cup molasses
1/2 cup brown sugar, lightly packed
Prepare 3 or 4 pans of snow using 9-inch pie plates, cake pans, iron skillets and the like. Gather fresh clean snow into the pans and leave them outside in the cold.
In a small saucepan, stir the molasses and sugar together over medium heat with a rubber spatula. Heat the mixture to 245 degrees Fahrenheit (firm ball stage), stirring frequently. Use a candy thermometer to monitor the temperature. When the molasses mixture has reached 245 degrees Fahrenheit, remove the pan from the heat and carefully pour the molasses mixture into a small ceramic pitcher. Place the pitcher on a plate in your work area.
Bring the pans full of snow into the work area and allow the kids to pour the molasses mixture onto the snow. You have about 10 or 15 minutes until the molasses starts getting difficult to pour.
About 5 minutes after the molasses has come into contact with the snow, test to see if has solidified. If it feels cool and hard, it’s ready to go. Stick any leftovers in the freezer (or outside) still on the snow. If you store it without the snow, it will turn into goo.
3/4 cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 cup unsalted butter (1/2 stick), softened
2/3 cup brown sugar, packed
1/4 cup dark molasses
1 large egg, beaten
1/4 cup buttermilk
1 cup canned pumpkin puree
1/4 cup oil
8 whole dried dates, pitted and chopped (optional, but tasty)
Preheat oven to 350 F.
Combine dry ingredients in medium bowl with whisk – flours, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg.
Cream softened butter and brown sugar in large bowl. Add molasses, egg, buttermilk, pumpkin, and oil and stir. Pour in the flour mixture and stir to combine.
Bake in greased mini muffin pan for 15 minutes (give or take). Roughly 20-25 minutes for regular sized muffins or until inserted toothpick comes out clean. Transfer to cooling rack and serve warm or cooled.
1 c. brown sugar
1/4 c. molasses
Combine the butter, brown sugar, and molasses in the saucepan.
Set over medium-high heat and bring the mixture to a boil. Turn the heat down but keep the mixture boiling.
Stir the mixture until it reaches 250° on the candy thermometer or forms a hard ball when a few drops are dropped into cold water. This will take about 20 minutes.
Carefully pour the hot mixture onto the buttered platter and let it cool at least 10 minutes until you can handle it without burning your hands. Be extremely careful—the mixture will be very, very hot when you pour it out!
Butter your hands well and pull off a handful of the molasses mixture.
Stretch it as far as you can without breaking the strand, fold it back together, stretch it again, over and over, until it begins to turn pale and creamy.
Stretch the candy into long ropes about ½” thick and cut the ropes into 1” pieces.
Let the pieces cool before you eat them. Store in an airtight container.
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg
Wet Ingredients
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter
1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup dark molasses
2 large eggs
Added Ingredients
2 cups old-fashioned oatmeal
1 cup chopped walnuts
1 cup shredded coconut
Mix the dry ingredients well and set aside. In a mixer, cream the butter and add the sugar and beat until thoroughly incorporated. Add the molasses and vanilla and beat until blended. (For a lighter flavor, you may use light molasses.) Add the eggs one at a time, beating well and scraping the bowl after each egg. On the lowest possible speed, gradually add the dry ingredients and then the oatmeal, walnuts, and coconut. The mixture will be somewhat stiff.
Place well-rounded teaspoonfuls of dough 2 inches apart on a foil-lined cookie sheet and bake for 15 minutes until lightly browned and still soft. Let stand for 2 or 3 minutes, then move to a rack to cool.
Makes: about 60 delicious treats
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The wave – initially thirty feet high, according to some bystanders – exerted enough force “to break the girders of the adjacent Boston Elevated Railway’s Atlantic Avenue structure and lift a train off its tracks.” The force of the blast and the ensuing tsunami also overturned dozens of cars and trucks in its path and “demolished several nearby buildings, including a fire station which was crushed by a huge chunk of the steel tank.”
Witnesses later stated that, as the tank collapsed, there was a loud rumbling sound, like a machine gun, and that “the ground shook as if a train were passing by.” In his book, Dark Tide, Stephen Puleo described the disaster this way:
Molasses, waist deep, covered the street and swirled and bubbled about the wreckage. Here and there struggled a form — whether it was animal or human being was impossible to tell. Only an upheaval, a thrashing about in the sticky mass, showed where any life was…Horses died like so many flies on sticky fly-paper. The more they struggled, the deeper in the mess they were ensnared. Human beings — men and women — suffered likewise.
The next morning, the Boston Evening Globe ran a front-page story based on eyewitness accounts taken on that terrible day:
Fragments of the great tank were thrown into the air, buildings in the neighborhood began to crumple up as though the underpinnings had been pulled away from under them, and scores of people in the various buildings were buried in the ruins, some dead and others badly injured.
In all, more than 150 people were injured and 21 children and adults were killed, mostly by crushing or asphyxiation. Fueled by the intense anti-immigrant sentiments that swept through the United States during the post-World War I Red Scare, owners of the distillery tried to pin the disaster on Italian anarchists, claiming that they had bombed the tank because they knew that the molasses was intended to be fermented to produce ethyl alcohol, a key component in the manufacturing of munitions at the time.
Although the exact cause of the disaster was never determined, no evidence of sabotage was ever found and experts generally attributed it to unseasonably warm temperatures combined with structural defects and poor maintenance of the tank.
More than one hundred lawsuits were filed against the owners of the tank, and litigation dragged on for six years, during which 3,000 witnesses testified. In the end, the court ruled for the plaintiffs and ordered the company to pay nearly a million dollars in damages - a “bittersweet victory for survivors of one of the strangest disasters in American history.”
FOOD FACT: Molasses was once used in the United States as the primary sweetener in cooking and baking. According to the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink, New England colonists also used molasses “as an ingredient in brewing birch beer and molasses beer and in distilling rum.” In the early 1700s, “rum made in New England became an essential element in a highly profitable Triangular Trade across the Atlantic. The colonists exported rum to West Africa in trade for slaves; the ships brought the slaves from Africa to the French West Indies, trading them for more molasses and sugar; these products were then shipped to New England to make more rum....When the cost of refined sugar dropped at the end of the nineteenth century...molasses lost its role as an important sweetener in the American diet.”
Old-Fashioned Molasses Candy
3 tablespoons butter (no substitutes), softened, divided1 cup sugar
3/4 cup light corn syrup
2 teaspoons cider vinegar
3/4 cup molasses
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
Grease a 15-in. x 10-in. x 1-in. pan with 1 tablespoon butter; set aside. In a heavy saucepan, combine sugar, corn syrup and vinegar. Cook over low heat until sugar is dissolved, stirring frequently. Increase heat to medium; cook until a candy thermometer reads 245 degrees F (firm-ball stage), stirring occasionally. Add molasses and remaining butter. Cook, uncovered, until a candy thermometer reads 260 degrees F (hard-ball stage), stirring occasionally. Remove from the heat. Add baking soda; beat well.
Pour into prepared pan. Let stand for 5 minutes or until cool enough to handle. Butter fingers; quickly pull candy until firm by pliable (color will be light tan). When candy is ready for cutting, pull into a 1/2-in. rope. Cut into 1-in. pieces. Wrap each in waxed paper or colored candy wrappers.
Molasses Snow Candy Recipe
This recipe requires a small ceramic pitcher (A creamer works well), a candy thermometer, and fresh snow. The pitcher’s spout helps control the flow of the molasses. The handle on the pitcher allows you to pour the molasses without touching a hot cup directly.1 cup molasses
1/2 cup brown sugar, lightly packed
Prepare 3 or 4 pans of snow using 9-inch pie plates, cake pans, iron skillets and the like. Gather fresh clean snow into the pans and leave them outside in the cold.
In a small saucepan, stir the molasses and sugar together over medium heat with a rubber spatula. Heat the mixture to 245 degrees Fahrenheit (firm ball stage), stirring frequently. Use a candy thermometer to monitor the temperature. When the molasses mixture has reached 245 degrees Fahrenheit, remove the pan from the heat and carefully pour the molasses mixture into a small ceramic pitcher. Place the pitcher on a plate in your work area.
Bring the pans full of snow into the work area and allow the kids to pour the molasses mixture onto the snow. You have about 10 or 15 minutes until the molasses starts getting difficult to pour.
About 5 minutes after the molasses has come into contact with the snow, test to see if has solidified. If it feels cool and hard, it’s ready to go. Stick any leftovers in the freezer (or outside) still on the snow. If you store it without the snow, it will turn into goo.
Pumpkin Molasses Muffins
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour3/4 cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 cup unsalted butter (1/2 stick), softened
2/3 cup brown sugar, packed
1/4 cup dark molasses
1 large egg, beaten
1/4 cup buttermilk
1 cup canned pumpkin puree
1/4 cup oil
8 whole dried dates, pitted and chopped (optional, but tasty)
Preheat oven to 350 F.
Combine dry ingredients in medium bowl with whisk – flours, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg.
Cream softened butter and brown sugar in large bowl. Add molasses, egg, buttermilk, pumpkin, and oil and stir. Pour in the flour mixture and stir to combine.
Bake in greased mini muffin pan for 15 minutes (give or take). Roughly 20-25 minutes for regular sized muffins or until inserted toothpick comes out clean. Transfer to cooling rack and serve warm or cooled.
Pulled Molasses Candy
4 T. Butter1 c. brown sugar
1/4 c. molasses
Combine the butter, brown sugar, and molasses in the saucepan.
Set over medium-high heat and bring the mixture to a boil. Turn the heat down but keep the mixture boiling.
Stir the mixture until it reaches 250° on the candy thermometer or forms a hard ball when a few drops are dropped into cold water. This will take about 20 minutes.
Carefully pour the hot mixture onto the buttered platter and let it cool at least 10 minutes until you can handle it without burning your hands. Be extremely careful—the mixture will be very, very hot when you pour it out!
Butter your hands well and pull off a handful of the molasses mixture.
Stretch it as far as you can without breaking the strand, fold it back together, stretch it again, over and over, until it begins to turn pale and creamy.
Stretch the candy into long ropes about ½” thick and cut the ropes into 1” pieces.
Let the pieces cool before you eat them. Store in an airtight container.
Molasses Cookies
Dry Ingredients3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg
Wet Ingredients
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter
1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup dark molasses
2 large eggs
Added Ingredients
2 cups old-fashioned oatmeal
1 cup chopped walnuts
1 cup shredded coconut
Mix the dry ingredients well and set aside. In a mixer, cream the butter and add the sugar and beat until thoroughly incorporated. Add the molasses and vanilla and beat until blended. (For a lighter flavor, you may use light molasses.) Add the eggs one at a time, beating well and scraping the bowl after each egg. On the lowest possible speed, gradually add the dry ingredients and then the oatmeal, walnuts, and coconut. The mixture will be somewhat stiff.
Place well-rounded teaspoonfuls of dough 2 inches apart on a foil-lined cookie sheet and bake for 15 minutes until lightly browned and still soft. Let stand for 2 or 3 minutes, then move to a rack to cool.
Makes: about 60 delicious treats
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