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Fudge Hearts or Rounds
2 cups of granulated sugar, 1/3 a cup of condensed milk, 1/3 a cup of water, 1/4 a cup of butter, 1 1/2 squares of Baker's Premium No. 1 Chocolate, 1 teaspoonful of vanilla extract.
Boil the sugar, milk and water to 236 degree F., or to the "soft ball" degree; stir gently every few minutes; add the butter and let boil up vigorously, then remove from the fire and add the chocolate; let stand undisturbed until cool, then add the vanilla and beat the candy until it thickens and begins to sugar. Pour into a pan lined with paper to stand until cooled somewhat; turn from the mould and with a French cutter or a sharp edged tube cut into symmetrical shapes.
A standard turn-of-the-century boiled fudge with one unusual step: the chocolate goes in off the heat, and the pan is left alone until cool before beating. Both details matter more than they look.
- The hinge: do not beat while hotThe instruction to "let stand undisturbed until cool" is what makes this fudge smooth rather than gritty. Beating a hot syrup throws large sugar crystals; let it drop to about 110F, barely warm to the back of a finger, before you start working it. Do not stir or scrape it during the cooling either.
- Baker's Premium No. 1This was unsweetened chocolate liquor, sold in one-ounce squares, and the modern equivalent is unsweetened baking chocolate. Use 1 1/2 oz, chopped, so it melts fully in the residual heat of the syrup.
- Condensed milkIn 1900 "condensed milk" on an American grocery shelf usually meant the sweetened canned product. The recipe gives no clue either way, and 1/3 cup of sweetened condensed milk adds noticeably more sugar than the same measure of evaporated milk. If you want the sugar balance the two cups of granulated sugar implies, evaporated is the safer reading.
- 236F is not optionalUse a candy thermometer rather than trusting the soft-ball test alone. A few degrees high gives a hard, crumbly fudge; a few degrees low and it never sets firm enough to cut cleanly. Calibrate in boiling water first if the thermometer is old.
- "Let boil up vigorously"After the butter goes in, the mixture foams and climbs. Use a saucepan at least three times the volume of the syrup, and heavy-bottomed, since sugar at this stage scorches on thin metal.
- A French cutterSmall tinned cutters of the kind used for aspic and petits fours, or the sharp end of a plain piping tube. Cut while the slab is still slightly warm and pliable; fully cold fudge crumbles at the edge rather than cutting.
- YieldAbout 1 1/4 lb of fudge, roughly a 6-inch square slab a little over half an inch thick. Expect 20 to 25 small hearts or rounds, with trimmings left over.
Walter Baker & Co. of Dorchester, Massachusetts, one of the oldest chocolate firms in the United States, issued small recipe booklets for decades as advertising, and the numbered grades of its chocolate appear by name throughout them. Fudge itself was still a fairly new sweet when this was printed: it is generally traced to American women's colleges in the 1880s and 1890s, where students made it over gas jets and chafing dishes in their rooms, and recipes circulated by letter under the names of Vassar, Smith and Wellesley.