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Chocolate Fudge with Fruit
Two cups of sugar, one-half cup of milk, one-half cup of molasses, one-half cup of butter; mix all together and boil seven minutes; add one-half cup of Baker's Premium No. 1 Chocolate and boil seven minutes longer. Then add two tablespoonfuls of figs, two tablespoonfuls of raisins, one-half a cup of English walnuts and one teaspoonful of vanilla.
A molasses fudge studded with figs, raisins and walnuts -- darker and chewier than the plain cocoa fudge a few pages earlier, and closer to a penuche. It is timed rather than measured by temperature, which is where it goes wrong.
- Seven minutes is not a temperatureThe recipe boils twice for seven minutes and never tells you what you are looking for. Timings do not transfer between pans, quantities and heat sources, and fourteen minutes on a modern burner will usually overshoot. Use a thermometer and take it to the soft-ball stage, 234 to 240F.
- Molasses is half the character and most of the riskHalf a cup of molasses against two cups of sugar makes this a dark, chewy fudge. It also scorches readily, because the invert sugars in molasses catch long before plain syrup would. Heavy pan, moderate heat, and keep it moving.
- "Half a cup of chocolate"Another volume measure for a solid. Premium No. 1 came in one-ounce squares; half a cup chopped or grated is roughly two to two and a half ounces of unsweetened chocolate.
- The fruit and nuts go in off the heat"Two tablespoonfuls of figs" means chopped figs. Add them, the raisins, the walnuts and the vanilla after the pan comes off, or the fruit scorches on the bottom and the vanilla boils away.
- What the recipe forgets to tell youIt never says to beat it, and it never says to pour it. Fudge of this period was beaten as it cooled until it lost its gloss, then poured into a buttered pan and cut in squares. The Cocoa Fudge earlier in this same book spells all of that out, including the warning not to beat too far.
- Cool before beatingLet it fall to about 110F before you start beating. Beaten hot, it grains coarse; beaten at the right temperature it sets smooth.
- If it will not setAn underboiled batch stays a thick sauce, which is a perfectly good thing to have over ice-cream. Returning it to the pan with a spoonful of water and reboiling to temperature will usually rescue it.
Fudge is an American college sweet, and this book is full of the evidence: Vassar Fudge, Smith College Fudge and Wellesley Marshmallow Fudge all appear within a few pages of this one. The confection spread through the women's colleges in the 1890s, made over spirit lamps in dormitory rooms and passed between institutions by recipe, and by the time Walter Baker was printing booklets like this one the college names had become a selling point in themselves. This version is the homelier branch of the family: molasses instead of milk-and-sugar alone, and dried fruit and walnuts stirred in at the end, which puts it nearer the older tradition of boiled sweetmeats than to the pale, creamy fudge the colleges were famous for.