Fudge No. 2
2 cups fruit sugar ¼ cake unsweetened chocolate Small pinch of salt Butter size of walnut.
Mix above together, then moisten with milk. Add a pinch of cream of tartar to make it light and foamy. Let boil until the soft ball stage. Then remove from fire and beat. One-third cake of chocolate may be used, depending on one's taste.
A bare-bones fudge that assumes you know the craft: the quantities of milk and chocolate are left to judgment, and the beating is the whole technique. A few conversions and one point about temperature will get you a smooth batch.
- "¼ cake" of chocolateUnsweetened baking chocolate was sold in cakes scored into 1 oz squares, most commonly an 8 oz cake, so a quarter cake is about 2 oz and the suggested third is closer to 2½–3 oz. Since cake sizes varied by brand, treat this as 2 oz of unsweetened chocolate for 2 cups sugar and adjust on the second batch.
- Butter the size of a walnutRoughly 1 tablespoon, shelled walnut rather than in-shell. It is there for mouthfeel and to keep the boil from climbing, not for structure.
- "Moisten with milk" is the gapThe original gives no quantity. For 2 cups sugar, something in the range of ½ to ¾ cup whole milk is a common proportion — enough to dissolve the sugar completely before it comes to a boil, and no more, or you simply boil longer to drive it off.
- Soft ball, and no guessing234–240°F (112–116°C). At the low end you get a soft, spreadable fudge; at 240°F it sets firm enough to cut. A candy thermometer clipped to the pan without touching the bottom is worth more here than any drop test.
- Cool before you beatThis is the hinge. Remove from the heat and let the syrup drop to about 110°F (43°C) undisturbed — no stirring, no scraping the sides — then beat. Beating a hot syrup grows large crystals and the fudge turns sandy, which is exactly what the fine sugar and cream of tartar are meant to prevent.
- Cream of tartarAbout ⅛ teaspoon. It inverts a little of the sugar during boiling, which discourages coarse crystals; the softer, creamier texture that results may be what the period phrase "light and foamy" is reaching for, but it is not a leavener and will not foam the syrup.
- Finishing and yieldBeat until the gloss dulls and the mass thickens, then pour at once into a buttered 6-inch square pan or small loaf tin. This makes roughly 1 lb, about 16 squares. Score while warm, cut when fully set.
Fudge is one of the few candies with a plausibly American college origin: it is generally traced to women's colleges in the northeastern United States in the late 1880s and 1890s, where Vassar students are said to have made and sold it in their rooms, and recipes circulated by letter long before they reached print. The technique — boil a sugar syrup to soft ball, cool it, then beat it into a fine-grained mass — is a simplified version of the confectioner's fondant, which is why so much of the instruction is about crystal control rather than flavor. Its appearance in the Five Roses Cook Book, published by a Canadian flour milling company and distributed to households that bought its flour, shows how quickly fudge moved from a novelty passed between students to a standard entry in the candy chapter of a general household book, made with pantry staples and no special equipment beyond a saucepan and a strong arm.