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Soft Creamy Fudge
2 C sugar. ¾ C milk Small piece butter 1 t vanilla Pinch cream of tartar Pinch of salt 2 heaping T cocoa Put all ingredients into a saucepan. Stir well. Place on stove over a slow flame, cover until sugar is dissolved, stirring slightly to keep flame, cover until sugar is dissolved, stirring slightly to keep mixture from sticking, raise flame a little higher and cook until soft ball forms in cold water.
Take from stove and set pan in pan of cold water.
Let stand until almost cold. Beat until candy begins to stiffen. Pour into a greased pan and cut into squares.
A plain stovetop cocoa fudge of the pre-thermometer era, where the whole outcome rests on the soft-ball stage and on how long you let it cool before beating.
- Missing sugarThe method refers to dissolving sugar, but no sugar quantity survives in the ingredient list. A workable proportion for this style of fudge is about 2 cups granulated sugar to 3/4 cup milk; treat that as a reconstruction, not the original figure.
- AbbreviationsC is cup, T is tablespoon, t is teaspoon. "Small piece butter" means roughly 1 tablespoon. A heaping tablespoon of cocoa is usually reckoned at somewhere near two level tablespoons, though the recipe gives no guide.
- Soft ball, in numbersThe cold-water test corresponds to 234-240F on a candy thermometer. Below that the fudge will not set; above it turns grainy and hard.
- Cover early, uncover lateCover early -- Covering the pan during the dissolving stage lets steam wash sugar crystals off the sides. This recipe departs from the usual no-stirring rule for boiled sugar by calling for slight stirring to keep the mixture from sticking, which a milk-and-cocoa syrup is prone to do.
- The hinge: cool before beating"Let stand until almost cold" is the instruction that makes this soft and creamy rather than gritty. Around 110F is the point to start beating; beating a hot syrup produces coarse crystals.
- Cream of tartarThe pinch of acid inverts part of the sugar and keeps the crystals fine. Modern recipes often use corn syrup for the same purpose; the cream of tartar version needs a little more attention to the cooling step.
- Pan and yieldThe recipe gives no pan size or yield. Working from the reconstructed quantities, a small buttered square pan is about right; score while warm, cut when fully set.
- Beating stops fastOnce the gloss dulls and the mass thickens, pour immediately. Fudge beaten past that point sets in the saucepan.
Cocoa fudge belongs to a distinctly American strand of home candy-making that spread through women's colleges and church cookbooks in the 1890s and after, once inexpensive granulated sugar and tinned cocoa powder were both reliably on the grocer's shelf. It is often traced to campus "fudge parties" at the eastern women's colleges, where a chafing dish or gas ring was the only equipment available. The same boiled sugar-and-cocoa mixture, poured before it stiffens, will spread over a cake as a fudge frosting, so such a recipe could serve two purposes.