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Wellesley Marshmallow Fudge
Heat two cups of granulated sugar and one cup of rich milk (cream is better). Add two squares of Baker's Premium No. 1 Chocolate, and boil until it hardens in cold water. Just before it is done add a small piece of butter, then begin to stir in marshmallows, crushing and beating them with a spoon. Continue to stir in marshmallows, after the fudge has been taken from the fire, until half a pound has been stirred into the fudge. Cool in sheets three-quarters of an inch thick, and cut in cubes.
A turn-of-the-century college fudge, written for cooks who judged sugar by dropping it in cold water. The chocolate and the marshmallows both need translating.
- Baker's Premium No. 1This was plain unsweetened chocolate, sold in blocks scored into one-ounce squares. Two squares means two ounces of unsweetened baking chocolate; do not substitute semisweet, which will make the finished candy cloying against two cups of sugar.
- "Boil until it hardens in cold water"The cold-water test is the hinge of the whole recipe, and the wording here is vague. Fudge is normally taken off at the soft-ball stage, 234-238F, when a dripped bead flattens between the fingers; a syrup that truly hardens has gone to hard-ball, 250F or above, and the result will be grainy and tooth-breaking. Use a thermometer and pull it at 236F.
- Rich milk or creamWhole milk works; heavy cream gives the smoother, softer set the recipe prefers. Anything lower in fat than whole milk will scorch more readily and set drier.
- Do not stir while it boilsThe original gives no instruction either way. Stir only until the sugar dissolves, then leave it alone until the thermometer reads, or the candy will crystallise coarse.
- Half a pound of marshmallowsPeriod marshmallows were generally denser and less aerated than modern bagged ones. Half a pound of today's standard marshmallows is roughly 30 large or about 4 cups of miniatures, and they will melt in almost at once off the heat; beat until no white streaks remain.
- Cooling in sheetsThree-quarters of an inch thick from this quantity fits an 8-inch square pan lined with buttered parchment. Let it set at room temperature rather than in the refrigerator, which sweats the surface, then cut in cubes with a hot dry knife.
Fudge is one of the few American sweets whose spread can be traced through women's colleges. The often-repeated account comes from a letter by Emelyn Battersby Hartridge, a Vassar student who described making and selling fudge in the late 1880s, and the confection moved quickly between Vassar, Smith and Wellesley, each producing a version that carried its name. Wellesley's is distinguished by the marshmallows beaten in at the end, which give a paler, softer, more forgiving candy than plain boiled fudge. That such recipes were made in dormitory rooms over gas jets and chafing dishes is part of the tradition, and it explains the loose cold-water test rather than any fixed temperature. The recipe appears here because Walter Baker & Co. of Dorchester, Massachusetts, published Choice Recipes as advertising for its chocolate, and a fashionable college sweet naming its Premium No. 1 by brand was worth several pages of copy.