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Marshamallow Fudge
1st BATCH 2 cups of granulated sugar, 1 cup of cream, 1/4 a teaspoonful of salt, 1 tablespoonful of butter, 2 squares of Baker's Premium No. 1 Chocolate, 1 teaspoonful of vanilla, Nearly half a pound of marshmallows, split in halves. 2nd BATCH 2 cups of granulated sugar, 1 cup of cream, 1/4 a teaspoonful of salt, 1 tablespoonful of butter, 2 squares of Baker's Premium No. 1 Chocolate, 1 teaspoonful of vanilla.
Start with the first batch and when this is nearly boiled enough, set the second batch to cook, preparing it in the same manner as the first. Stir the sugar and cream, over a rather slack fire, until the sugar is melted, when the sugar boils wash down the sides of the pan as in making fondant, set in the thermometer and cook over a quick fire, without stirring, to the soft ball degree, 236 degree F.; add the butter, salt and chocolate, melted or shaved fine, and let boil up vigorously, then remove to a cake cooler (or two spoon handles to allow a circulation of air below the pan). In the meantime the second batch should be cooking and the marshmallows be gotten ready. When the first batch is about cold add the vanilla and beat the candy vigorously until it begins to thicken, then turn it into a pan lined with waxed paper. At once dispose the halves of marshmallows close together upon the top of the fudge. Soon the other dish of fudge will be ready; set it into cold water and when nearly cold, add the vanilla and beat as in the first batch, then pour it over the marshmallows. When the whole is about cold turn it onto a marble, or hardwood board, pull off the paper and cut into cubes. If one is able to work very quickly, but one batch need be prepared, half of it being spread over the marshmallows.
A two-layer fudge with a marshmallow seam through the middle, and the timing of the two batches is the whole trick. Read the sequence through before lighting the burner.
- The hinge: cool before beatingThe recipe has you beat only when the candy is "about cold" (and the second batch "nearly cold", chilled in cold water). Beating hot syrup throws large sugar crystals and gives grainy fudge; beating cool, patiently, gives the fine-grained set the recipe is after.
- Baker's squaresA square of Baker's Premium No. 1 was one ounce of unsweetened chocolate, so two ounces per batch, four ounces in all. Modern Baker's unsweetened chocolate is sold in scored bars, but check the wrapper or weigh it rather than counting squares.
- Cream"Cream" here means dairy cream; today's light cream or whipping cream will both work, and half-and-half will set softer.
- Fire strengthA "rather slack fire" is low heat, used only until the sugar dissolves. A "quick fire" is medium-high, for the run up to temperature.
- 236°F and altitudeSoft-ball is 236°F at sea level. Subtract about 1°F for every 500 feet of elevation, or boil water first and take your thermometer's reading of 212°F as the correction.
- Washing down the sidesA wet pastry brush around the inside of the pan dissolves stray crystals that would otherwise seed the batch. Once the syrup boils, do not stir at all until the butter and chocolate go in.
- Marshmallows"Nearly half a pound" is a little under 8 oz. Split them horizontally and lay them cut side down so they grip the warm fudge.
- Pan and yieldAn 8-inch square pan lined with parchment suits this quantity. Two full batches plus marshmallows come to roughly 2 1/2 lb of candy, or about 60 one-inch cubes.
- The single-batch shortcutThe closing note is genuine but demanding: one batch, half poured and layered with marshmallows, the rest spread over before it stiffens. Have the pan lined and the marshmallows split first.
Walter Baker & Co. of Dorchester, Massachusetts — the oldest chocolate concern in the United States, dating to a mill established in the 1760s — issued a long series of small recipe booklets to move unsweetened baking chocolate into American home kitchens, and this is one of them. Fudge itself is a young sweet by cookbook standards: it is generally traced to women's colleges in the northeastern United States in the 1880s and 1890s, where chafing-dish candy-making was a dormitory pastime, and Vassar, Smith and Wellesley all had fudge recipes attached to their names. Marshmallow entered the picture once commercially manufactured marshmallows, made with gelatin rather than the mucilage of the actual marsh mallow root, became cheap and widely sold around the turn of the century. The insistence here on a thermometer, on washing down the pan, and on the language of fondant-making shows the booklet's other purpose: teaching amateurs to work like confectioners.