Pinoche
1/2 cup butter 1 cup nut meats 3 cups light brown sugar 1 cup milk 1 teaspoon vanilla Mix the sugar and milk over the fire; when hot add the butter; boil and stir until the mixture forms a soft ball when dropped in cold water. Add nuts and flavoring and beat until the sugar begins to granulate. Pour into buttered tins; mark in squares and set aside to cool.
A plain brown-sugar fudge that stands or falls on one number: the soft-ball stage. Everything else is assembly.
- Soft ball means 238FSoft ball -- the stage the cold-water test is aiming at is usually given as roughly 235-240F. A candy thermometer is an easier check than the cold-water test; pulled much below that range the fudge sets very soft, much above it turns hard and crumbly.
- Butter goes in after the sugar dissolvesButter goes in after the milk and sugar are hot -- the recipe heats sugar and milk together first and adds the butter once the mixture is hot. It then directs you to boil and stir until the soft-ball stage.
- Beat cool, not hot"Beat until the sugar begins to granulate" is the crystallisation step. Let the pan stand off the heat until it drops to about 110F, then beat hard for several minutes until the gloss dulls and the mass thickens; beating while boiling hot gives coarse, grainy candy.
- Light brown sugarModern light brown works directly; dark brown gives a stronger molasses note and a slightly softer set.
- MilkWhole milk. Evaporated milk or half-and-half gives a creamier result.
- Nut meatsWalnuts or pecans, and worth toasting first. Add them with the vanilla off the heat so they do not soften in the hot syrup.
- Buttered tinsAn 8-inch square pan, buttered or lined with parchment. Score the squares while the surface is still warm; once fully cool the slab cracks rather than cuts.
- YieldA substantial batch, on the order of 2 lb of candy; cut into about 36 squares from an 8-inch pan. Keep airtight; it dries out within a few days.
"Pinoche" is one of several spellings — penuche, panocha, penuchi — for brown-sugar fudge, and the name is generally traced to Spanish and Mexican panocha, with piloncillo, the cones of unrefined cane sugar sold in Latin American markets, a related term rather than a source of the word. In New England the word came to mean simply fudge made with brown sugar instead of chocolate, and it spread through American cookbooks in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries alongside the fashion for home candy-making. Loose-leaf collections like Mrs. Fryer's were sold to be added to and rearranged, and fudge, taffy and fondant required no equipment beyond a saucepan and a bowl of cold water.