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Fudge (Two and one-half cups)
Two and one-half cups of granulated sugar, one and one-half cups of light brown sugar, one and one-half cups of milk, butter the size of a walnut, six teaspoons of cocoa. Put the sugar, milk and cocoa in a pan on the stove, and when it starts to boil add the butter and let it boil for about fifteen minutes; take off the stove and add a few drops of vanilla, and nuts if desirable; beat for five minutes and pour into a buttered pan. This receipt makes one good-sized pan of fudge.
— Miss Constance M. Craigie
A plain boiled-sugar fudge of the kind that filled church and village fundraiser books. The instructions are sound but rely on judgment the original assumes you have.
- Cook to temperature, not to the clockFifteen minutes of boiling is a rough guide that depends entirely on your pan and burner. Use a candy thermometer and pull the pan at 236-238F (soft-ball stage); undercooked fudge stays a sauce, overcooked turns dry and crumbly.
- Butter the size of a walnutRoughly 1 ounce, or 2 tablespoons. Shelled walnut, not in the shell.
- The cocoaSix teaspoons is 2 tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa powder, most likely natural rather than Dutch-processed, though both were on sale by this date. Whisk it into the sugar dry before adding milk or it will float in lumps.
- Cool before beatingThis is the hinge. Beating while the syrup is still hot gives coarse, grainy fudge. Let it stand undisturbed until it drops to about 110F, then beat until it loses its gloss and thickens, which may take longer than the five minutes given.
- Pan sizeWith roughly four cups of sugar this fills an 8-inch square pan to a good depth. Butter it well and have it ready before you start beating, since the mixture sets fast once it turns.
- Nuts and vanillaAdd both after the mixture has cooled, not to the boiling syrup, or the vanilla will simply steam off. The recipe leaves the quantity of nuts open; about a cup of chopped nuts suits this volume.
- Watch for boil-overMilk and sugar climb the pan quickly. Use a saucepan at least three times the volume of the mixture and stir only until the sugar dissolves, then leave it alone.
Fudge as Americans know it emerged in the late nineteenth century and spread fast through women's colleges — the Vassar account of 1888 is the best known, with Smith and Wellesley versions following, though much of what is repeated about how students made it belongs more to lore than to evidence. It was cheap, needed no oven, and used the newly abundant granulated sugar and packaged cocoa that made confectionery a home project rather than a confectioner's trade. A community cookbook like this one is exactly where such receipts circulated: the recipe is credited to Miss Craigie by name, which was both an acknowledgment and a small guarantee that it worked.