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Nut Fudges
For nut fudges, boil together one cupful of cream and three cupfuls of granulated sugar for ten minutes, or until the syrup spins a hair. Remove from the fire, add two cupfuls of chopped nuts and stir briskly for ten minutes. Turn into shallow greased pans and when cold, cut into diamond shapes.
A two-ingredient fudge plus nuts, with no chocolate and no thermometer. The whole thing hinges on cooking the syrup far enough and then beating it at the right moment.
- "Spins a hair"An old sugar-boiler's test: a spoon lifted from the syrup trails a fine thread. That is the thread stage, roughly 230-235F, which is on the low side for fudge. Cook to 236-238F (soft-ball) on a candy thermometer for a fudge that sets firm enough to cut.
- Ten minutes is not a timeBoiling time depends on your pan width, your heat and the moisture in the cream. Treat the ten minutes as an estimate and the temperature as the instruction.
- Cool before beatingThe recipe has you stir the moment it leaves the fire. Beating hot syrup throws large sugar crystals and gives grainy fudge. Let it stand undisturbed until it drops to about 110F, then beat until it thickens and loses its gloss.
- CreamUse heavy cream, around 36% fat. The period's "cream" was unhomogenised and variable; modern heavy cream is a reasonable stand-in. Half-and-half or milk will not carry enough fat and the fudge turns hard rather than short.
- The nutsTwo cupfuls to three of sugar is a generous proportion. Walnuts, pecans and hickory nuts were all readily available for American candy of this period; toast and cool them first, and add them at the end of beating so they do not sink.
- Pan and yieldThe batch comes to roughly 2 lb of candy, enough to fill more than one shallow tin as the recipe suggests; depth and piece count will depend on the pans you use. Score the surface while still warm and cut through once fully cold.
- Watch for scorchingCream and sugar catch easily. Use a heavy saucepan, stir until the sugar dissolves, then leave it alone and wash any crystals from the sides with a wet brush.
Fudge in America was a college-girl candy before it was a commercial one: it is generally traced to women's colleges in the northeastern United States in the 1880s and 1890s, where it could be made over a gas jet or chafing dish in a dormitory room without a proper stove. That origin explains the form of recipes like this one, which need one pan, no baking and no special equipment beyond a spoon and a shallow tin. Note that there is no chocolate here at all; early fudge recipes included plain sugar-and-cream confections flavoured with vanilla, maple or nuts. The diamond cut looks deliberate on a plate.