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Dessert

Fudge III

A chocolate fudge made by boiling sugar, milk, chocolate, and butter until it forms a soft ball, then beating until creamy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Fudge III

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fudge

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

  2. Boil the mixture, stirring constantly, until it forms a soft ball in cold water.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla extract.

  4. Beat the mixture rapidly until creamy.

  5. If desired, add chopped nuts or coconut.

Set and serve

  1. Pour onto buttered plates and cut into squares.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Vanilla + nutstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together638 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Granulated sugar
Provides sweetness and, once boiled, forms the structure of the fudge.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and fat, giving the fudge a soft, smooth texture.
Chocolate
Supplies the chocolate flavour and cocoa solids that colour and flavour the fudge.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the fudge richer and smoother.

The step that matters

Beating the mixture until creamy. Beating while the sugar syrup cools causes tiny sugar crystals to form, giving fudge its smooth, creamy texture. Beating too early or too late can leave it grainy or too hard to shape.

Swap the nuts

The recipe marks nuts as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, milk, chocolate, butter, vanilla):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Cocoafits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, chocolate, butter, vanilla. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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