Peanut Fudge
2 cupfuls brown sugar 2 tablespoonfuls Crisco 1 cupful milk 1/4 teaspoonful salt 1 cupful chopped peanuts 1 teaspoonful vanilla extract Boil milk, sugar, Crisco, and salt until it forms a soft ball when tested in cold water, or 240 degree F. Remove from fire, add nuts and vanilla, beat until creamy. Pour into Criscoed tins, and when cool cut into cubes. A CALENDAR OF DINNERS
A straightforward brown-sugar penuche with peanuts, from one of the Crisco promotional cookbooks. The only tricky part is knowing when to stop cooking and when to start beating.
- CriscoPlain vegetable shortening; the book exists to sell it. Butter gives a better flavor in the same quantity, though the fudge will be slightly softer.
- The temperature is the recipe240F sits at the top of the soft-ball range, which is why the syrup passes the cold-water soft-ball test the recipe describes; cooking to the upper end of that range gives a firmer set. Use a candy thermometer and trust it over the cold-water test, but calibrate first in boiling water, which should read 212F at sea level.
- Pan and stirringUse a heavy saucepan at least three times the volume of the mixture; milk and brown sugar scorch readily and the syrup climbs as it boils. Stir until the sugar dissolves, then leave it alone.
- Brown sugarLight brown gives a milder result. Dark brown works and gives a stronger molasses note, closer to what would now be sold as penuche.
- PeanutsRoasted, unsalted peanuts, chopped coarse. If yours are salted, cut the quarter teaspoon of salt entirely.
- Tins and yield"Criscoed tins" means a greased shallow pan; an 8-inch square pan gives a fairly thin slab. Expect roughly a pound and a quarter of candy, or about three dozen pieces.
- CuttingScore the surface while the fudge is still warm and cut through once it is fully cool. Cut cold and set, it crumbles at the edges.
This comes from A Calendar of Dinners, one of a run of cookbooks Procter & Gamble commissioned after introducing hydrogenated vegetable shortening in 1911; Marion Harris Neil wrote several of them, and the recipes lean on Crisco throughout, including candy, where the fat's main job is to keep the syrup from crystallizing early and to grease the pan. Boiled brown-sugar fudge of this kind is generally called penuche, a name usually traced to Mexican Spanish panocha for unrefined sugar. Peanuts were cheap and abundant by the 1910s, which is why they turn up in so much home candy of the period.