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Orange Opera Fudge
Cover 1/2 cup shelled almonds with Boiling water, boil 1 minute; drain, cover with Cold water, remove skins and roast in hot oven until delicately brown, then chop them. Put in saucepan 1 1/3 cups sugar 1/2 tablespoon white corn syrup and 3/4 cup cream. Cook to 236 degrees F. or until a soft ball is formed in cold water, stirring constantly to prevent burning. Pour out onto marble slab or large platter which has been wiped with cheese-cloth wrung out of cold water. When cool add grated rind of 1/2 orange, bit of Orange color paste, if convenient, and Few grains salt. Work with broad spatula until candy begins to get firm, add chopped almonds and pack into greased tin or between bars. Cut in cubes for serving.
CREAMED EGGS AND MUSHROOMS WITH BACON CURLS Put 6 eggs in top of double boiler. Cover with Hot water, bring to boiling point, place over boiling water or on back of range and let stand 60 minutes. Remove shells and cut eggs in eighths lengthwise. Remove skins and stems from 1/2 pound mushroom caps and cut in slices lengthwise. Cover stems and skins with 1 1/2 cups cold water, heat slowly to boiling point, simmer gently 20 minutes and strain. Melt 1/3 cup butter, add 1/3 cup flour mixed with 3/4 teaspoon salt and 1/8 teaspoon pepper. When smooth add Stock strained from mushroom skins, with enough Top milk or thin cream to make 3 cups. Stir until sauce boils. Saute mushroom caps in 1 tablespoon butter for 3 minutes. Add to sauce with the Hard cooked eggs. When thoroughly heated turn out on a platter and arrange Bacon curls over the top. 4 small cooked potatoes cut in pieces or 1 cup cooked macaroni or 1 small can asparagus cut in pieces may be used instead of mushrooms.
Two dishes from the same menu page: a cream fudge worked on a slab, and a creamed-egg supper dish. Both are straightforward, but a few of the old conventions need translating.
- The temperature is the whole recipe236F is the low end of soft ball, and opera fudge depends on hitting it closely. Use a calibrated thermometer and wash down the sides of the pan with a wet brush early on. The recipe's instruction to stir constantly is there because cream scorches on the bottom of the pan; keep stirring, but stir gently and avoid throwing syrup up the sides.
- Cooling before workingThe marble slab wiped with a damp cloth is a cooling surface, not a decoration. Pour and then do not touch the candy until it is barely warm to the back of the hand, around 110F. Working it hot gives grainy fudge; a chilled sheet pan or a large platter will substitute for marble.
- Orange color pasteA concentrated confectioner's food colour, still sold as gel or paste. The recipe treats it as optional, and it is: the grated rind carries the flavour. Liquid supermarket colouring will work in a few drops, but avoid adding volume of any kind to the finished fudge.
- Corn syrupHalf a tablespoon of white (light) corn syrup acts as a doctor, interfering with sucrose crystal growth so the grain stays fine. Do not leave it out, and do not substitute dark corn syrup or golden syrup unless you want the colour and flavour.
- Yield and packingAbout three quarters of a pound of fudge, roughly a 6-inch square half an inch thick, cut into 20 to 24 cubes. "Between bars" refers to adjustable confectioner's caramel bars; a small greased pan or a foil-lined loaf tin does the same job.
- The 60-minute eggsThis is the old "hot water" method for hard-cooked eggs: brought to a boil, then held off direct heat for an hour to set the yolks gently without a green ring. It works, but 12 minutes off the heat in covered boiling water gives the same result. Any egg held in cooling water for an hour should go straight into the sauce and be served hot, not held warm on the back of the stove.
- Mushroom stockSimmering the peelings and stems for 20 minutes is the flavour base of the sauce, and worth keeping. Modern cultivated mushrooms do not need peeling, so simply trim and slice the caps and simmer the stems and trimmings. Strain and top up with cream to a full 3 cups or the sauce will be pasty.
- Top milkThe cream that rose in a bottle of unhomogenized milk, roughly today's half-and-half. Use half-and-half or light cream.
- Bacon curlsGiven without instruction because the book assumes them: thin bacon rashers wound around a skewer or the tines of a fork and cooked in a hot oven until crisp, or baked flat on a rack and rolled while still pliable. The recipe specifies neither an oven temperature nor a number of servings.
"Opera fudge" and the closely related "opera creams" belong to the American cream-candy tradition of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, particularly associated with confectioners in Ohio and Pennsylvania, who sold pale, fine-grained fudges made with cream rather than the darker chocolate kind; the name is generally traced to candy sold for eating at the theatre, though the connection is traditional rather than documented. The mushroom-peeling stock, the marble slab, and the assumption that a reader knows how to make a bacon curl all point to a kitchen with time and a domestic-science education behind it.