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Dessert

American Fudge

A sweet chocolate fudge made with sugar, chocolate, butter, milk, vanilla, and hazelnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and hazelnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 279 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

American Fudge

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fudge

  1. Mix the sugar, chocolate, butter, and milk in a saucepan.

  2. Boil for a few minutes, stirring vigorously.

  3. When the mixture begins to thicken, remove from heat.

  4. Add vanilla and chopped hazelnuts, and stir well.

Set and cut

  1. Pour into buttered tins, mark into squares, and let cool before breaking.

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. Vanilla + hazelnuttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together279 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  5. Chocolate + hazelnuttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together350 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

White sugar
Provides the sweetness and forms the crystal structure of the fudge as it cooks and sets.
Baker’s chocolate
Adds chocolate flavour and fat, giving the fudge its rich colour and body.
Milk
Adds moisture and milk solids, which soften the texture and add creaminess.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, richer mouthfeel and a softer set.

The step that matters

Boiling and thickening. Stirring while the mixture boils keeps sugar from scorching and crystallising unevenly. Removing it from heat as it begins to thicken stops it cooking too far, which would make the fudge hard rather than smooth.

Swap the hazelnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Cocoafits about as well
  3. Hazelnutthe original
  4. Pecansfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, chocolate, butter, milk, 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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