Fudge
3 cups sugar 1 cup milk or cream 4 or 5 tablespoons cocoa or 2 squares unsweetened chocolate 1 tablespoon butter 1 teaspoon vanilla extract Put sugar, milk and cocoa or chocolate into saucepan; stir and boil until it makes soft ball when tested in cold water; take from fire, add butter and vanilla, cool and stir until creamy. Pour on buttered plates and cut into squares.
A plain boiled fudge with no thermometer and no marshmallow crutch. Everything depends on two things: the temperature you stop at, and the temperature you start beating at.
- Soft ball means 234-240FSet a candy thermometer and pull the pan at 236F for a fudge that slices cleanly. The cold-water test still works — a dropped spoonful should form a ball that flattens between the fingers — but a few degrees either way is the difference between grainy and soupy.
- Cool before you stirThis is the hinge. Add the butter and vanilla but do not beat until the mixture has dropped to about 110F, when the pan is merely warm to the palm. Stirring hot syrup seeds large sugar crystals and gives sandy fudge.
- Squares of chocolateAn old "square" of unsweetened chocolate is one ounce, so two squares is 2 oz. If using cocoa, natural unsweetened is closer to the period product than Dutch-processed.
- Milk or creamWhole milk works but cream gives a softer set and more forgiving texture. Skim milk has too little fat to keep the crystals fine.
- Watch for scorchingThree cups of sugar in one cup of liquid is a thick boil. Use a heavy-bottomed pan of at least two quarts, since the mixture climbs, and stir over medium heat rather than high.
- Buttered platesA buttered 8-inch square pan is easier than plates and gives even thickness. Score the squares while the fudge is still slightly warm, then cut through once set.
- YieldAbout one and a half pounds, roughly 36 small squares. Keeps a week in a tin at room temperature; refrigeration makes it sweat.
Fudge is generally traced to American college towns of the late 1880s and 1890s, and in particular to women's colleges in the northeast; the usual account has students making it in their rooms over chafing dishes, and recipes circulating under the names of Vassar, Smith and Wellesley. Whatever its exact origin, it arrived at a useful moment: cheap refined sugar, canned and bottled milk, and industrially produced cocoa and chocolate squares had all become ordinary grocery items, so a candy that once required a confectioner's skill could be made by anyone with a saucepan and a cup of cold water for testing. Cookbooks of this period, aimed at the home cook rather than the professional, commonly carry whole "Candies" sections.