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Fudges and Caramels
FUDGE is one of the most easily made, and one of the most popular of all the home-made candies. Caramels are also a favorite. These candies can be made a great variety of ways.
CHOCOLATE FUDGE Take two cupfuls of sugar, two ounces of chocolate, one cup of good milk, and one tablespoonful of butter, or if you wish a richer fudge use two tablespoonfuls of butter. Bring the sugar, milk and butter to a boil and cook until it threads or to 235 degrees. Add the chocolate which should be melted or shaved fine. Stir it in well, then add a teaspoonful of vanilla, and beat up until creamy. The secret of good fudge lies in the beating. Some stir constantly from the time it is removed from the fire until it turns creamy, while others let it stand until nearly cool, and then beat up until creamy. Pour into buttered pan or mold, and when cold cut into neat small squares. MAPLE SUGAR FUDGE Take two cups of maple sugar, one cup of milk, one tablespoonful of butter, and one cupful of chopped walnut meats. Boil until the mixture forms a soft ball when dropped into cold water, or to about 240 degrees. Remove from fire and let stand until nearly cool, then stir until creamy. Pour into greased pans, and when cool cut into squares.
Two sound fudge formulas, both dependent on the same two variables the text only gestures at: the final boiling temperature and the temperature at which you start beating. A candy thermometer removes nearly all the guesswork.
- Beat cool, not hotThis is the hinge. Fudge crystallizes coarse and grainy if beaten while hot; let the pan sit undisturbed until the mass falls to about 110F, lukewarm to the back of the hand, then beat until it loses its gloss and thickens. The book offers both methods as equal preference, but modern candy practice is firmly on the side of cooling first.
- The chocolateTwo ounces of chocolate in a book of this period means unsweetened baking chocolate, not a chocolate bar. Two squares of a standard baking bar is the direct equivalent; sweetened chocolate will throw the sugar balance badly off.
- Temperatures and the thread test235F is the low end of soft-ball, not thread stage, which runs a few degrees cooler. Trust the number over the description. Calibrate the thermometer in boiling water first and adjust for altitude by subtracting roughly 1F per 500 feet of elevation.
- Cold-water testWhere no thermometer is available, drop a little syrup into a cup of very cold water. At the right stage it gathers into a ball that flattens between the fingers when lifted out. Refresh the water between tests.
- Milk"Good milk" means whole milk, which is what the recipe wants; skim gives a thin, dull fudge. Watch it closely past 220F, since milk sugars scorch on the pan bottom and the whole batch takes on the taste.
- Maple sugarSold today as hard cakes or as granulated maple sugar; either works, and cakes should be grated or broken small so they dissolve before the syrup climbs. The maple version has no chocolate to mask defects, so a scorched bottom is unforgivable there.
- Pan size and yieldEach batch makes roughly a pound, rather more with the walnuts in the maple version, which sets to a good thickness in a buttered 8-by-4 loaf pan. Score it while still warm and cut through once fully cold.
- If it seizesFudge that grains up in the pan can be returned to the heat with a few tablespoons of milk, redissolved completely, and reboiled to temperature. Wiping down sugar crystals from the pan sides with a wet brush during the first boil prevents most of this.
Fudge is a genuinely American sweet and a fairly young one when this book was printed. It is generally traced to women's colleges in the northeastern United States in the late 1880s and 1890s, where students made it over gas jets and chafing dishes in their rooms; recipes circulated under names like Vassar and Smith fudge before they reached commercial cookbooks. The name is often said to come from the older sense of fudge as a botch or a fudged job, which suits a confection that began as an unreliable batch of something else. Its appeal to a household manual like this one is obvious: unlike pulled taffies and boiled sugar work, fudge needs no marble slab, no hook, and no particular strength, only a saucepan, a thermometer or a cup of cold water, and patience during the beating. The maple version reflects the northeastern kitchen of the period, where maple sugar in cakes was a common pantry sweetener rather than the specialty item it has since become.