Cream candies go back for centuries, when sugar was stirred and refined into a creamy paste. One great example – which should not be missed, is the hard-to-find cream filberts of the late 1800s. These have a nut coated with creamed sugar and finished with a delicate sugar shell, much like the French creams.

 

Children enjoyed cream candies, also known as “pulled creams,” as an inexpensive treat, while grown-up versions were more decorative and fanciful. The French Creams of today were popular in the 1940s, when small treats were served at card games, teas, and cocktail parties, and most certainly given as a gift. And melt-away mints, with their soft pastel colors, were enjoyed as a candy of quality and good taste.

The varieties of cream candies were advertised far and wide, the selections as varied as the places they were sold. Some were encased in a chocolate shell – known today as buttercreams – while others stood on their own. Turn-of-century ads touted black walnut, apple jack, pecan, strawberry nut, peanuts, and coconut creams of all sorts – as bewildering to us as they were delicious to customers then. One confectioner sold the cream candies for 25-cents a pound and in 30-pound boxes or “pails” meant for “churches, schools, and retail merchants.”