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Dessert

Fudges

Fudges are a chocolate confection made by boiling chocolate, sugar, butter, and milk until thick, then cooling and cutting into squares.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fudges

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine chocolate, sugar, butter, and milk.

  2. Boil the mixture until it forms a waxy ball when dropped in cold water.

  3. Pour the mixture onto a platter.

  4. Stir vigorously before it cools until the grain is very fine.

  5. Cut into squares once cooled.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Chocolate + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Chocolate + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Chocolate + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,543 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor and much of the fudge's richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the fudge and, as it crystallizes, helps set its texture.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, tender mouthfeel.
Milk
Supplies liquid that dissolves the sugar and adds creaminess.

The step that matters

Stir vigorously as it cools. Stirring during cooling forces sugar to crystallize into many tiny crystals, producing the very fine grain that makes fudge smooth rather than gritty. Stirring too early or too late changes the texture.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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