Skip to main content
Dessert

Chocolate Fudges

A sweet chocolate confection made by cooking sugar, chocolate, cream, and butter until thick, then set and cut into squares.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chocolate Fudges

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fudge

  1. Cook all ingredients together, stirring constantly until thick but not hard when dropped in water.

  2. Remove from heat and stir until the mixture begins to set.

Set and cut

  1. Pour into buttered pans or plates about ½ inch thick.

  2. When nearly cold, mark 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Chocolate + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

  4. Chocolate + creamtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 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

Granulated sugar
Provides sweetness and, as it dissolves and cooks, the body that sets the fudge firm.
Baker's chocolate
Supplies the chocolate flavour and fat that give the fudge its rich, dense texture.
Cream
Adds moisture and fat, keeping the fudge smooth and creamy rather than grainy.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, softer bite.

The step that matters

Stop cooking at the soft-ball stage. Sugar syrup firms as it cools. Cooking past the point where a drop turns thick but not hard in water makes the fudge hard and crumbly, while stopping too early leaves it too soft to set.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, chocolate, cream, butter):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Filbertfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, chocolate, cream, butter. 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.

More chocolate fudge recipes

Cake 10Frosting 5 See all 85 →

You might also like

Chocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesChocolate CookiesChocolate Cookies76 recipesChocolate Drop CookiesChocolate Drop Cookies50 recipesChocolate CakeChocolate Cake32 recipes