Fudge
3 cups sugar. 1 cup cream. 1 tablespoon butter.
When sugar is melted add four or five tablespoons of cocoa. Stir and boil fifteen minutes. Take from fire and heat until creamy. Add teaspoonful vanilla. Pour on buttered plate and cut in squares.
To make marshmallow chocolate fudge add 10 cents worth of marshmallows just before pouring on buttered platter.
A terse, pre-thermometer fudge recipe that assumes the cook already knows what soft-ball stage looks like. Two words in the original need reading carefully before you start.
- "Heat until creamy" is a typo for beat"Heat until creamy" is almost certainly a misprint for "beat" -- the syrup is off the fire at this point, so nothing is being heated. Cool the pan undisturbed to about 110F, then beat hard until the gloss dulls and the mass thickens; beating hot gives coarse, gritty crystals.
- Use a thermometer, not the clockFifteen minutes at a boil is a guess that depends entirely on your pan width and burner. Cook to 236-238F (soft-ball stage) and stop, whatever the clock says.
- "When sugar is melted"This means when the sugar has fully dissolved in the cream over heat, not caramelised. Any undissolved grains on the pan wall will seed the whole batch; wash them down with a wet brush before the syrup comes to a boil.
- Cocoa, not chocolateFour or five tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa powder. Whisk it with a little of the sugar before adding so it does not clump on the surface of the hot syrup.
- Cream"cream" here is probably closest to modern light or heavy cream, though period cream was not standardised. Half-and-half or milk will work but gives a firmer, less rich set.
- "10 cents worth of marshmallows"A small quantity by modern standards. Use about 4 oz of marshmallows, stirred in after beating and just before pouring so they stay in soft streaks.
- Buttered plateAn 8-inch square pan, buttered, is the practical equivalent. Score the squares while the fudge is still warm and cut through once set.
- YieldThree cups of sugar makes roughly 1 1/2 lb of fudge, about 36 small squares.
Fudge belongs to the American college towns of the 1880s and 1890s, where it spread by handwritten copy among students at the women's colleges before it reached print; the earliest versions are generally traced to Vassar and Smith, and the name is often said to come from the sense of "fudge" as a botched or bodged job, a candy that fails to reach the harder stages. This version reflects two changes that had arrived by the time it was written: cheap cocoa powder, which replaced grating a block of unsweetened chocolate, and commercial marshmallows, which may be why the quantity is given in cents rather than ounces. Neither the pan nor the thermometer is specified, and candy-making in a home kitchen of this period was tested by dropping syrup into cold water and judging the ball between the fingers.