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Chocolate Dipped Fruit Fudge
FRUIT FUDGE 1 1/2 cups of granulated sugar, 1 cup of maple syrup, 1 1/2 cups of pure corn syrup, 1/2 a cup of thick cream, or 1/3 a cup of milk and 1/4 a cup of butter, 3/4 a cup of fruit, figs, and candied cherries and apricots, cut in small pieces.
CHOCOLATE FOR DIPPING 1/2 a cake or more of Baker's "Dot" Chocolate. Stir the sugar, syrup, pure corn syrup and cream until the sugar is melted, cover and let boil three or four minutes, then uncover and let boil, stirring often but very gently until a soft ball may be formed in cold water, or until the thermometer registers 236 degree F. Set the saucepan on a cake cooler and when the mixture becomes cool, add the fruit and beat until it becomes thick, then turn into pans lined with waxed paper. In about fifteen minutes cut into squares. Coat these with the "Dot" Chocolate.
A soft, syrup-heavy fudge closer to a fondant caramel than the modern chocolate kind, finished by hand-dipping. Two things decide whether it works: the cooking temperature and the temperature at which you start beating.
- Do not beat it warmThe instruction to let it cool on a rack before beating is the hinge of the recipe. Fudge beaten while hot throws large sugar crystals and turns grainy; let it stand undisturbed to about 110F, then beat. Do not stir or scrape the pan while it cools.
- 236F is right, and worth checkingSoft-ball stage is 234-240F at sea level. Subtract roughly 1F per 500 feet of elevation. With this much corn syrup and maple syrup in the pan the mixture is well buffered against graining, but it also thickens slowly, so trust the thermometer over the clock.
- The covered boilCovering the pan for three or four minutes at the start is deliberate: condensing steam washes sugar crystals off the sides of the pan. A wet pastry brush around the rim does the same job.
- "Pure corn syrup"Ordinary light corn syrup, Karo or equivalent. The word "pure" most likely marked it out from the glucose-and-cane blends then on sale rather than from anything on shelves now. High-fructose corn syrup is a different product and is rarely sold retail.
- Thick creamHeavy or whipping cream, 36 percent fat or more. The alternative given, milk plus a quarter cup of butter, will give a somewhat different texture and flavour.
- Baker's "Dot" ChocolateA discontinued Walter Baker product, a sweetened coating chocolate sold for hand-dipping. Substitute a good dark couverture. Baker's cakes were commonly a half pound, which would make half a cake about 4 ounces; expect to need rather more than that to dip a full batch comfortably.
- TemperingThe original assumes the reader knows how to handle dipping chocolate. Melt to about 115F, cool to 82F, rewarm to 88-90F for dark chocolate, or use a compound coating if you would rather not temper. Untempered chocolate will set soft and streaked.
- FruitDried figs, candied cherries and candied apricots, chopped small. Toss the pieces in a little of the granulated sugar first so they separate rather than clumping when they go into the warm mass.
- Yield and cuttingFifteen minutes of setting is the minimum; the squares dip more cleanly if left an hour or overnight, and they keep about two weeks in a tin.
Walter Baker & Co. of Dorchester, Massachusetts, was the oldest chocolate firm in the United States, and its Choice Recipes booklets were advertising in the guise of a cookbook, distributed cheaply or free to promote Baker's premium, cocoa and specialty lines. Several editions were compiled with the involvement of well-known cooking-school figures such as Maria Parloa and Janet McKenzie Hill, which is why the instructions carry a school-trained precision unusual in period candy recipes: a stated thermometer reading, a covered boil to dissolve crystals, an explicit cooling step. Fudge itself was still a relatively young sweet when this was printed, generally traced to American women's colleges in the 1890s, where it was made over gas jets in dormitory rooms and spread by handwritten recipe. Products like "Dot" chocolate existed because home candy-dipping was a genuine domestic craft in the early twentieth century, with dipping forks, marble slabs and coating chocolate all sold to amateurs; the fashion faded as boxed commercial confectionery became cheap, and the product names vanished with it.