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Fudges and Caramels: Take
FRUIT FUDGE Take two cupfuls of light brown sugar, a cupful of milk, a tablespoonful of butter, and a pinch of cream of tartar. Boil until it makes a soft ball, then add a fourth pound of marshmallows. Beat until dissolved, then add one-half cupful of chopped walnut meats, and a cupful each of chopped dates and figs. Beat up until creamy, and pour into buttered pans.
CINNAMON FUDGE Take two cupfuls of light brown sugar, one cupful of milk, one-half cupful of butter, and two tablespoonfuls of cinnamon. Boil to the soft ball stage, remove from the fire and add a teaspoonful of vanilla. Beat up until creamy, pour into a buttered mold and cut into squares when cold. PINEAPPLE FUDGE Take two cupfuls of granulated sugar, one cupful of water, and a pinch of cream of tartar. Boil to the hard ball stage, then add one cupful of candied pineapple. Pour over the stiffly beaten whites of two eggs, and beat up until light and foamy.
LAYER FUDGES These are fine and are made by pouring one kind of fudge upon another in layers. For this purpose one should use only the fudges that combine well together. Layers of several different kinds of fudge may be used, or only two, as desired. A chocolate fudge with a layer of divinity fudge between is delicious. Pour half of the chocolate fudge into a pan, and when cool pour over it a layer of divinity fudge; then when this has cooled pour over the remainder of the chocolate fudge which should have been kept hot in a bowl set in hot water. Fruit and nut fudges make a good combination. COCOANUT MARSHMALLOW FUDGE Take two cupfuls of sugar and one-half cupful of milk and boil up, then add one tablespoonful of butter and boil to the soft ball stage. Add a cupful of grated cocoanut and beat up until creamy. Arrange some marshmallows in a pan, and pour the fudge mixture over them. When cold cut into squares between the marshmallows.
ANOTHER COCOANUT MARSHMALLOW FUDGE Take two cupfuls of granulated sugar, one cupful of milk and one tablespoonful of butter. Boil to the hard ball stage. Take it off the fire and add a teaspoonful of vanilla and one cupful of grated cocoanut. Mix this in, then add a half-dozen of marshmallows. Let stand a while until soft; then pour the mixture over the stiffly beaten whites of two eggs. Beat up until it begins to get creamy, then pour into buttered pans, and when cool cut into squares. BARLEY FUDGE Take a cupful of barley and brown it in the oven; be careful not to burn it, but have it a nice brown. Run this through the coffee-grinder. Take two cupfuls of brown sugar, one-half cupful of corn syrup, one-half cupful of milk and a tablespoonful of butter. Boil to the soft ball stage, add a tablespoonful of vanilla, then stir in the ground barley. Stir until creamy and pour out into a buttered pan, and when cold cut into squares. COFFEE CARAMELS Take one cupful of light brown sugar, one cupful of golden corn syrup, one-half cupful of milk, one-half cupful of strong boiled coffee and one tablespoonful of butter. Boil to the hard ball stage. Remove from the fire, stir in one teaspoonful of vanilla, then pour into buttered pans, and mark off into squares. When cool cut into squares, and wrap each caramel in waxed paper.
A cluster of related fudge and caramel formulas from the era just after home candy thermometers became affordable but before they were assumed. All of them hinge on hitting the right syrup stage, and none of them tell you the temperature.
- Soft ball and hard ball, in numbersSoft ball is 234-240F (112-116C); hard ball is 250-266F (121-130C). The cold-water test the author assumed works, but a clip-on or instant-read thermometer removes the guesswork, and a couple of degrees decides between fudge and a candy you cannot cut.
- The one thing that mattersDo not stir once the syrup is boiling, and do not beat until it has cooled to about 110F. Beating a hot syrup throws large sugar crystals and gives grainy fudge; the long cool-then-beat is what makes it creamy. The recipes say "remove from the fire and beat" without that pause built in.
- Brown sugar scorchesThe brown-sugar batches (fruit, cinnamon, barley) burn far more readily than white. Use a heavy-bottomed pan of at least 3 quarts, medium heat, and expect the mixture to climb the sides once the milk proteins start to caramelize.
- Quantities that read oddlyTwo tablespoonfuls of cinnamon in the cinnamon fudge is aggressive by modern palates; one teaspoon to one tablespoon is closer to modern practice. A fourth pound of marshmallows is 4 oz, roughly 2 cups of miniatures or about 16 large ones.
- Cocoanut"Grated cocoanut" means fresh or dried unsweetened coconut, not the sweetened flaked bags sold today. Sweetened coconut will push these already very sweet fudges over the edge; use unsweetened shredded.
- Golden corn syrupA period corn syrup of the amber grade; light corn syrup is the usual modern stand-in, though the golden grades were darker and more strongly flavored. It is there as an interfering agent, like the cream of tartar, to keep sucrose from crystallizing coarsely, so do not omit it.
- The egg-white batchesPineapple fudge and the second cocoanut marshmallow fudge are divinity in method: hot syrup poured over beaten whites. The syrup does heat the whites, but not evenly or reliably to a safe temperature, so use pasteurized whites if you are serving anyone vulnerable. A stand mixer beating on medium while the syrup goes in as a thin stream is the practical way to do it.
- Barley fudgeToast the barley in a moderate oven, around 350F, stirring, until evenly and nicely browned but well short of burnt, as the recipe warns, then grind it fine. A spice grinder does what the coffee mill did. It stays gritty by design; the texture is closer to a nut fudge than a smooth one.
- Layer fudges and yieldFor layering, keep the second batch loose over a bain-marie as instructed, and let each layer set to firm-but-tacky so the layers bond rather than slide apart. Yields vary: the plainer batches come out around a pound, which fits an 8-inch square pan and cuts into about 25 pieces, while the fruit fudge, with its added fruit and nuts, makes considerably more.
Fudge is a late nineteenth-century American invention, and the standard account traces its spread to the women's colleges of the northeastern United States in the 1880s and 1890s, where students boiled it over gas jets and chafing dishes in their rooms; recipes labeled "Vassar fudge" and "Smith College fudge" circulated widely in print by the 1890s. What dates this particular chapter is its confidence with commercial ingredients: bottled light corn syrup and factory-made marshmallows, sold in boxes and tins, were both new conveniences of the first decades of the twentieth century, and here they are already doing structural work, the syrup preventing crystallization and the marshmallows serving as a ready-made source of aerated sugar and of whatever setting agent they were built on \or egg white \or an earlier cook would have had to work up from scratch. The barley fudge is the odd survivor, a cheap toasted-grain flavoring of the sort also used to stretch or imitate coffee, and a reminder that home candy making sat between thrift and indulgence.