Fig Fudge
Pinch cream of tartar Pinch salt ¼ lb. chopped figs 1 lb. brown sugar 1 tablespoonful Crisco 1 cupful water 1 teaspoonful lemon extract Wash and dry figs, then chop them. Put sugar and water into saucepan, and dissolve, add Crisco and cream of tartar, and when it boils, add figs, and boil to a soft ball when tried in cold water, or 240° F., stirring all the time. Remove pan from fire, add lemon extract and salt, cool five minutes, then stir until it begins to grain, and quickly pour into Criscoed tin. When half cold mark in squares.
A brown-sugar fondant fudge carrying chopped dried figs, worked by hand rather than beaten with a mixer. The whole thing hinges on the two temperature stages: cook to exactly the soft-ball point, then let it drop before you stir.
- Crisco and the greased tinCrisco is hydrogenated vegetable shortening; any solid white shortening or unsalted butter works in the tablespoon called for. "Criscoed tin" means a shallow pan greased with the same fat; the recipe does not give a size.
- 240F is the whole recipeCook to the soft-ball stage, which the book equates with 240F; a calibrated candy thermometer is the easiest way to hit it. Overshooting gives a firmer, drier fudge; under-cooking leaves it sticky and slow to set. The recipe offers the cold-water test and the thermometer reading as equivalents.
- Do not stir while it coolsOff the heat, add the extract and salt and let it stand undisturbed for five minutes, as directed. Stirring a hot syrup throws large sugar crystals and produces a gritty fudge; the graining should begin only once the mass has cooled.
- Cream of tartarA pinch inverts some of the sucrose and keeps the crystals fine. It is doing real work here and should not be left out.
- The figsDried figs, not fresh; the recipe has you wash and dry them before chopping. Snip off the hard stem ends before chopping.
- Adding the fruitThe figs go in once the syrup boils and stay there through the whole cook, which softens them and lets them shed some moisture. Stir constantly at that point or the sugar under them will scorch.
- Marking in squaresScore the surface while the slab is still warm and pliable, as directed, then cut through when fully cold. A cold, unmarked slab is harder to cut cleanly.
- YieldRoughly a pound and a quarter of candy, based on the sugar and fruit called for. Store it in a tin between layers of waxed paper.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was published by Procter & Gamble to teach cooks what to do with a product that had no precedent in the kitchen: a solid, shelf-stable white fat made from hydrogenated cottonseed oil, introduced in 1911. The book's strategy was to show Crisco doing everything butter and lard did, which is why a candy chapter exists at all. The single tablespoon of shortening in a fig fudge is not there for flavor but to interfere slightly with crystal growth and keep the finished slab tender, the same job butter does in ordinary fudge. Dried figs were a cheap, sweet, year-round pantry fruit in this period, both imported and grown domestically in California, and appear throughout early twentieth-century American candy and pudding recipes.