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Britain and Ireland · Volume 35, The Pie, the Pluck and the Girder Drink

Tablet

Central Belt confectionery

Tablet: a small stack of pale golden-cream tablet squares with a matte, grainy crystalline surface, roughly cut, stacked on a wooden board.

An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.

Time
30 minutes
Researched
10 sources cited
Reviewed
Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
Cooked
Not yet cooked and reported

Sugar, butter and condensed milk boiled to soft ball stage and then beaten hard to force it to crystallise, the opposite discipline to fudge, and one of the Central Belt's two great confectionery traditions alongside Tunnock's own industrial sugar work.

As tradition built it

Makes about 36 squares. About 30 minutes, plus setting.

Ingredients

Method

  1. Bring the sugar, butter, condensed milk and a splash of full fat milk together in a heavy bottomed pan.
  2. Boil steadily, stirring regularly to stop it catching, until it reaches soft ball stage, around 118 to 120°C on a sugar thermometer.
  3. Remove from the heat and beat the mixture hard and continuously for several minutes, by hand or with an electric beater, until it thickens, turns paler and begins to lose its shine, the point at which the sugar has been forced to crystallise rather than stay smooth.
  4. Pour immediately into a lined tin, since it sets hard fast, and cut into squares once cool.

What a modern chef changes

The syrup held at a precise, unattended temperature, and a smoked salt finish

Rungs 3 and 6

Method

  1. Hold the sugar syrup at a precise, unattended temperature in a sous vide bath before finishing the boil on the stove, for far more even, repeatable results than a hand held thermometer over direct heat allows.
  2. Beat the finished mixture in a stand mixer fitted with a paddle rather than by hand, for a finer, more consistent crystal structure.
  3. Finish a portion of the batch with a fine dusting of smoked salt, drawing directly on the same smoking principle this volume borrows, honestly, from its Highland neighbour.

Notes

No named Scottish chef was found applying modernist technique to tablet specifically, and this chapter says so plainly rather than inventing a precedent that does not exist; what follows is this book's own, honestly labelled extrapolation.

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