Craft & Allergen Notes

Kitchen Practices

Cloverfield is a one-room workshop: one copper kettle, one marble slab, one confectioner at a time. That arrangement is deliberate. Small batches keep the cook close to the sugar, and hand cutting keeps the texture honest.

• Batches are cooked one flavor at a time; the kettle is scoured between cooks.
• Pastilles are rolled and dried by hand on waxed paper across two days.
• Tins are lined, filled, counted, and labeled in the same session as the cook.
• Batch codes combine the cook date, the kettle number, and the entry number in the pencil ledger.

Ingredient Families

The archive draws on four ingredient families that have been in the ledger since the 1960s. Individual collections combine them differently, and the sleeve card on each tin lists the full ingredient family for that batch.

• Sugars and syrups. Cane sugar, wildflower honey, molasses, and glucose for the cooked body of lozenges and hard drops.
• Botanicals. Horehound herb, sassafras bark, star anise, clove bud, violet petal, and rose water, steeped or infused before the sugar is added.
• Oils and extracts. Peppermint oil, wintergreen oil, lemon oil, and vanilla, weighed in small amounts at the end of the cook so the aroma survives.
• Finishing ingredients. Confectioner's sugar for dusting pastilles, sweet cream for wafers, and beeswax for the traditional gloss on honey lozenges.

Allergen Ledger

Because the workshop cooks one batch at a time in a single kettle, the house can state its allergen position plainly. Buyers with severe sensitivities should still read this section before ordering a gift library.

• Milk. Peppermint cream wafers contain sweet cream. Other collections are cooked without milk, but the marble slab and the kettle are shared equipment.
• Soy and gluten. No wheat flour or soy ingredient is used in any current collection.
• Tree nuts and peanuts. No nuts are cooked in the workshop. Pastilles are dusted with confectioner's sugar, not nut meal.
• Egg. No egg is used in any current collection.
• Sulfites. Molasses-based horehound and anise batches may carry naturally occurring sulfites from the syrup.

Shared equipment means the house does not label any tin as allergen-free. Care package treats assembled for a specific recipient are packed on a cleaned slab, and the batch note on the sleeve records the order of the cook day.

Texture Matrix

Texture is where handmade candy tells the truth. The archive uses four documented melt styles, and the pairing cabinet uses the same language when it recommends a collection.

• Slow-dissolve lozenge. Two minutes or more on the tongue; honey and horehound families.
• Crisp hard drop. A clean snap, then a long bark or spice finish; anise and sassafras families.
• Powdery pastille. Sugar-dusted shell with a tender floral center; violet and rose families.
• Cooling mint. Chalk-firm body with a wintergreen or peppermint finish; mint families.

Storage and Keeping

Hard drops and pressed lozenges keep their flavor for nine to twelve months in a closed tin, stored cool and away from sunlight. Pastilles are at their best within four months of the cook date. Putting a keepsake tin in the refrigerator is not recommended; the sugar will weep when the tin comes back to room temperature.

Questions about a specific batch, an ingredient family, or a care package request can be sent to cloverfieldconfectionery@gmail.com. Catalog reading terms are set out in Counter Terms.