<HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><BODY BGCOLOR="#ffffff"><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" SIZE=2 FAMILY="SCRIPT" FACE="Comic Sans MS" LANG="0">Those recipes sound an awful lot like the candying recipes in Martha Washington, and in the modern preserving books I've read. Esp the one where you boil up the preserve every day for 15 days--sounds like the watermelon pickle one I read but never tried (only that one, you add an extra cup of sugar each day). Still, VERY similar. And yes, there is a temperature in candy-making called 'spinning a thread'-- According to Farm Journal's Homemade Candy Book: "Soft-Crack: Syrup forms hard, but not brittle, threads rather than a ball (270-290 * F). For toffees and butterscotch. Hard-Crack: Syrup forms brittle threads that break between your fingers. (300-310* F) For brittles, lollypops and caramel or candy apples."<BR>
Yrs, Devra <BR>
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</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" SIZE=3 FAMILY="SCRIPT" FACE="Comic Sans MS" LANG="0"><BR>
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Devra Langsam<BR>
www.poisonpenpress.com<BR>
devra@aol.com</FONT></HTML>