June 23, 2020 • 26 mins
Nowadays, most people in the global West associate fudge with the idea of a homemade, homely confection. Yet once upon a time, this dangerously delightful, sugar-laden snack was the domain of the elite. Learn more about the origin of fudge here -- and tune in for part two of our series: Fudge As Rebellion.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show Ridiculous Historians. As always, thank you so
much for tuning in. My name is Ben. This is
an interesting one today. I gotta ask, um, you know,
when you hear the word fudge, what do you think
of inferior chocolate? Here we go, Uh, super producer, Casey Pegrom,
(00:50):
what about you? I like fudge, So I'm gonna say
it is a not a superior chocolate per se, but
you know it's on equal footing with milk chocolate or
chocolate or any of the other fine chocolate products. That
to disagree, my friend, I will I will say, like
I do have experiences of going to like Helen Georgia
(01:10):
and like getting fudged there and it's just too much.
It's just too heavy and you feel sick for like
the rest of the day after you consume it. So moderation,
But um, yeah, I like, I like a little fudge now.
And then I guess my thing is I'm known by
the way, I just don't know what it is like
is it's like it's almost chocolate, it's almost caramel, it's
bordering on cake. It's just it occupies this liminal space
(01:32):
of confections that I just can't quite wrap my head around. Yeah, yeah,
that that's my take on fudge. It's also a fun
substitute word for a naughty word aspect of it. It's funny.
We Uh, we were supposed to start recording about a
half hour ago, but we ended up just shooting the
breeze about multiple things, including the most famous use of
(01:54):
fudge as a curse word I think was in the
Christmas Story. Uh. And you're right, I like the freeze
liminal space here because I like, maybe like you k cy,
I like many people associate fudge with stuff you would
see in like a country store on a rural road trip,
next to the pepper jelly or whatever. And I think
(02:14):
most of us associate fudge with chocolate. But it doesn't
have to be right. There's maple fudge. There's all kinds
of fudge in there, like a seventies kind of southern
rock band called Vanilla Fudge. Oh. Absolutely, there is anybody
that saw the Tarantino movie once by a time in Hollywood.
The climax of that movie is a vanilla fudge. Oh
(02:36):
that's the uh set me for you? Why don't you
babe that that whole thing's somebody else's song, but it's
their version, and if you go on YouTube and look
up the live version, it is the most seventies thing
you will ever see in your life. I love it. Well,
we've got to stop the show for a second because
we have to check out Vanilla Fudge. I can't believe
someone beat us to that name. We're gonna have to
come up with something new for our band. But while
(02:58):
we're exploring that, we have to tell you, I don't
know about you, guys, but I just found out that
I didn't know anything about fudge, like the history of fudge,
the actual origin story, in the genesis of it. Fudge
is first off, much more recent invention than I had thought.
I don't know about you guys. And secondly, as we're
(03:19):
gonna find today, fudge was in its heyday associated not
with like rural country stores or cracker barrels or whatever,
but it was associated instead with a bit of rebellion. Yeah,
it's true. I didn't realize it was such a relatively
modern invention too. I assumed it was like developed on
the prairie by the pioneers, you know, or even earlier
(03:42):
than that. It's just I just assumed fudge should always
kind of been you know, you you'd turn your butter
and you'd make your fudge. But that's not the case
at all. Um, let's start with a little bit of etymology.
Fudge it wasn't the other way around. Fudge wasn't a
word derived from the chocolate a thing. It was the
other way around. Fudge was a verb before it was
(04:04):
a confection around the seventeenth century. Um, it was something
you would use to say, Oh, I'm gonna fudge that,
you know, sort of cheat something to the left or
to the right a little bit like maybe you've got
some woodworking that you're doing. I don't know, just an example,
and you need to fudge two pieces so they become flush.
That's not a great example, obviously, I'm not a carpenter.
Bank can you think of a better example of fudging
(04:24):
something in the physical sense? Yeah, I think the woodworking
example is good. I think that I don't know how
accessible this is to our fellow listeners, but I think
the three of all us have all fudged a little
something in production where we maybe don't have the ideal
audio we wants, but we're like we could play with
this a little bit, so we've been able to fudge around.
(04:48):
You know, it's interesting because etymologists now think that fudge
came from an older, obsolete term fadge, which sounds like
fudge with a weird New England accent f A d
G right, exactly, f A d G E with the
silent e, which I still don't understand. One of the
(05:09):
great mysteries of the English language, the silent e. But
that's the story for another day. Yeah, the Oxford English Dictionary. Um,
there's an article on the invention of fudge on Chowhound
and they referred to that entry where it describes fudge
or fadge as meaning to fit together or even the
idea of something turning out well, the implication maybe being
(05:31):
despite less than ideal circumstances. But the implication is more
that it wasn't about a mistake exactly. But we also
know that there is at least legend fudge legend uh
fudging about the idea that someone was trying to make
a batch of caramels. As I was saying earlier, like
(05:51):
what is fudge and they ended up with fudge? Um,
because fudge contains sugar crystals, and that's actually something that
kind of is a no no in baking. For the
most part, you don't want there to be sugar crystals
because that can give a grainy kind of texture, and
fudge is sort of the exception to that rule. Uh.
It's these micro crystals of sugar that give it that
(06:13):
firm texture, and they're small enough so they do melt
in your mouth and they don't feel weird and sand
like on your tongue, but they melt so quickly that
it has sort of a smooth consistency. And I think
that's part of my weirdness with fudge, is the consistency.
It doesn't act quite like chocolate because the crystals are there.
It's a little bigger, so it has more of a
(06:34):
I don't know, gloopy kind of thing. I don't want
to nag fudge for anybody, but clearly, yeah, it's uh
it's got almost a paste like consistency. Uh. For anyone
familiar with um, the Middle Eastern North African food hulva,
which is a popular snack, it's like that. Uh. That
might not be the best comparison, but you're spot on
(06:57):
with the weird state and importance of the sugar crystals.
So in a previous episode, we we endeavored to clumsily
teach you how to whistle, and you, guys, I listened
back to that part. It's actually it was worth it.
It was pretty hilarious. I made my kid listen to it.
I held the phone up to her ear just during
(07:19):
the mouth sounds part, and she just made the most
offended face. But then she started laughing uncontrollably, because it's
just it's I don't know, not to like talk about ourselves,
but it is simultaneously disgusting and endearing, you know. For
that one, I think it's okay for us to talk
about ourselves this way, because we're not saying we did
a good job. I think the fun part of that
(07:43):
was the brilliant fact that none of the three of
us pointed out that maybe we shouldn't try to explain
how to put fingers in our mouths while we were
doing it. But but still, it's pretty hilarious. So now
we're gonna attempt to teach you the secret to cooking udge.
This is with help from the Exploratorium. So now that
(08:04):
you've mastered that weird problematic wolf whistle, it's time to
begin your fudge career. Likenell said, you want these crystals
to form. Forget all the other stuff you hear about candy.
This is not applied to fudge. But you want them
to form at a certain time, as certain temperatures. So
if you want to avoid that gross kind of grainy fudge,
(08:27):
it's not so much how you cook it as it
is how you cool it. So you'll see a fudge
recipe that will call for just in general, call for
heating all the ingredients to two hundred and thirty four
degrees fahrenheit. That's what's called the softball stage, where you
can kind of mold it and then you allow it
to cool, don't touch it, allow it to cool to
(08:48):
about a hundred and ten degrees fahrenheit, and then when
it hits one ten, that's when you start stirring. And
you keep stirring and stirring and stirring as the candy
becomes thicker and thicker and thicker. And what's happening is
every time you stir, you're creating more crystal seeds, and
you get lots and lots of tiny ones instead of
(09:08):
the big ones. And I think that that goes to
the texture you're talking about, right, Yeah, it absolutely does.
And you know, if you stirch too much, you don't
get the crystals at all, I guess, or there's so
many of them that doesn't give you the same consistency.
Don't stir enough, it becomes grainy and unpleasant. So it
really is. I mean, honestly, fudge making is kind of
an art, you know, if you have to really keep
(09:29):
an eye on the temperature. Uh, it's not something that
you can just go in and do without knowing what
you're doing. So kudos to all the fudge stirs the
fudge and I don't know what's what's the word for
a fudge maker, fudge enthusiast. I like it. I like it,
But you're right, Casey. I do think about, like, you know,
the little candy stores on the boardwalk in Savannah or
(09:50):
in Hell and where you can get a free sample,
you know, and you can see their whole assembly line
for like making fudge and prelins or saltwater taffy and
all that. That's definitely what I think of when I
think of this treat. So yeah, like chocolate caramels could
(10:10):
be seen as being kind of the progenitor, is that
the right word or the precursor I guess to to
to fudge, and those have been around since the eighteen sixties.
We found a recipe uh in an eighteen seventy cookbook
from Maryland, um very very similar process. Uh So totally
understand the notion that fudge was created by fudging this
(10:33):
caramel recipe, because if you end up with these crystals
like we're talking about, which you would not want in
a sticky, chewy kind of caramel, you would end up
with a little bit more of a crumbly and substantial
kind of like we said, fudgie. Really for lack of
I mean, that's really it's the best word for it,
because that's kind of what it is. Really nothing else
quite like it, and that's one theory behind it. But
(10:57):
we really still aren't quite a hundred percent sure of
who truly invented the dessert. But we do know is
where it came from, which is a college, Vassar University
in eighteen nine two or thereabouts. Yeah, be not confused, folks,
Fudge is marketed in a dishonest way. Fudge is a
(11:21):
food of the elite. Okay, it's not. It wasn't a
case where somebody was selling produce on the side of
the road and accidentally also made fudge. No, this comes
from a storied institution, like you said, Noel Uh. The
earliest origin of it dates back to a document by
(11:41):
one Immelin Battersby Heartridge. She wrote a letter describing her
encounter with fudge. But she says this happened while she
was attending classes at Vassar in the eighties eight eight six.
But she says there was already fudge in play. There
was a store in Baltimore that was selling it for
(12:02):
like forty cents a pound, So we know it originated
around that time, but we don't know exactly who invented it.
For a long time, Heartridge was credited with inventing the
substance fudge, but Vasser itself disagrees. They have an article
in their encyclopedia called Vasser Myths and Legends that says, essentially,
(12:23):
look Emmelyn Heartridge described fudge. That's the first known written
account we have of fudge. But she in her own
letter said that she got the instructions to make it
from someone else. Well good on Vassar were trying to
set the record straight and not just you know, co
opting fudge for themselves, because we know that Vasser has
(12:46):
a really interesting history when it comes to food. Was
originally a women's college. Now it's a co ed private school.
UM that happened in a nineteen sixty nine pretty recently.
Was founded in eighteen sixty one by Matthew Asser. UM
very remarkable architecture. Uh. There's a pub on the campus
called the Mug for short, which is the full name
(13:09):
is Matthews Mug named after the the owner and founder,
who is a brewer. And Vasser, as many of you
will know, is located in one of my favorite cities
to say out loud in New York, but Keepsie. And
it's fun to look at because it looks like it
would be spelled poof Keepsie because it's p o U
g h k e E p s i E. But
it's Pokeepsie. It's a good one. I'm a shoeboygan man myself,
(13:32):
but that's just because of our our recent episode. Um,
you know what, one day, forget it. One day, let's
just do an episode, perhaps a listener mail episode, where
we just read off weird place names. I don't know
about you, guys. It's always hilarious to me when we
have someone right in and they're like, you know that
(13:52):
weird cacophonous agglomeration of consonants and vowels that you tried
to pronounce is actually pronounced papoloia And you're like, no,
there's not a p in there. Those are all g
anyway proper names. So there's another one in like Boston,
for example, that's you know, it looks peabody, but they
say it's pbody, pbody, pbody. You know, who's to know
(14:14):
unless you've heard it spoken, unless you grew up in
that area. But you know, our listeners are always super
respectful when they correct us, and we appreciate that. I
want to do this before we move on. UM. I
don't know about u k s here, you know, but
being a nerd, I spent the vast majority of things
I learned I learned by reading, which doesn't help with pronunciation, right.
Uh So I want to give a shout out to
(14:35):
the person who wrote to us on our if you
guys are our wolf Whistle episode and said it's pronounced Boson,
not boatswain, So we see, we hear you, thank you.
It was all of us what that now. I don't
accept that. I reject that someone made a horrible mistake.
They did, But I mean, what is a living language
(14:58):
but a mixed tape of horrible mistakes that we all accepted.
But it's a boat job. It's a job that takes
place on a boat. How can you take the boat
out of this boat job? It's yeah, it's weird. There's
so many maritime traditions, you know what I mean? And
boatswain has pronounced boson. So there we have it. Which
(15:18):
I learned something anyway, Speaking of learning, back to Poughkeepsie.
So it's interesting because Vassar has this fascinating history with
food and it exists before fudge. We would introduce you
to one Ellen Swallow Richards class of eighteen seventy, widely
acknowledged as America's first professional female chemist. Not the first
(15:42):
female chemist, of course, just the first one who had
the full time job doing it. And one thing that
she is known for today was a book she wrote
called Food as a Factor in Student Life. This convinced
the Boston School Committee to change its usual pol sees
about diet. She was so ahead of her time, you know,
(16:04):
even I think we've all even in recent years, uh
started to understand the link between nutrition and development, especially
in kids, right in elementary schools and middle schools. Uh,
this goes on when you're in college. And she has
a quote she went to the Women's Congress at the
eight ninety three Chicago's World Fair and raised an excellent point.
(16:27):
I don't know, you want to do the honors? Sure? Yeah.
And I think it's interesting too because we know that
there's a history of college students eating like trash. You know,
the idea of like ramen and and you know Kraft mcarnie.
And she's pervades to this day because it's like a
period where you don't really have a lot of money
and you're kind of trying to let just make it
on what you've got. So definitely an argument that continues
(16:48):
to be part of student life, right. Um. And she
was really ahead of the curve. So she says the following.
A cow is worth to the state perhaps a hundred
dollars a year. A trained my mind, one hundred thousand
dollars a year. A nation which so carefully feeds its
cattle should take care of its young men and women
with promising brains. In fact, the future of our nation
(17:12):
may be said to depend on the feeding of the
students now in the schools. Yep, yeah, and that's I mean,
she makes an excellent point, and you make an excellent
point as well. No, the only thing that I am
not with you on is that Ramen is amazing cheap ramen.
I I want to thank my college days and my
(17:34):
like my traveling hobo days, for lack of a better word,
for teaching me how amazing. Robin is you a little
sesame oil and that bad boy a soft boiled egg. Well, yeah,
of course it tastes good. Bad I love ramen, but
the sodium content is like through the roof of the
noodles are deep fried, and you know, it's just like
there's really nothing of value and its unless you, you know,
(17:54):
sex it up a little bit and add a little
cabbage or a little vegetable or a soft boiled egg.
Like you said, that is the beauty of ramen. Though
it's very adaptable. But I don't think that kids and
dorms are doing a whole lot of that's true. Oh gosh, yeah,
that's true. And you make a good point about nutrition.
I just I just have to go to bat fork Man,
I missed going out to like a Ramen place, but
(18:15):
you're right, You're right, And Richards has this interest in
the science of nutrition right now. Historians believe this is
partially inspired by some classes she took with Vassar's professor
of astronomy, Maria Mitchell. Maria Mitchell held weekly gatherings for
(18:40):
her classes at her own apartment, which was inside the observatory.
How cool is that? And students really look forward to
this time because they would have kind of a social visit,
almost a salon, right, They would drink coffee, they would
have you know, cookies and snacks or and then they
(19:01):
would get to meet Professor Mitchell's friends, right, her fellow
intellectuals who included, uh, quite prominent activists and forward thinkers
like Elizabeth Katie Stanton and Lucy Stone Blackwell. This was
a great opportunity for these kids. But there's a question
was were they there because they wanted to learn more
(19:23):
about the suffrage movement uh and abolition and other progressive policies,
or were they there because Ms. Mitchell's cookies were better
fair than they could get normally. Yeah, it's a good question. Um.
Vassar has all these great resources like the encyclopedia we
talked about, and and a and a very um intense
(19:44):
archive that shows that Hannah Lionman, who's the college's first
woman principle, really was into this Victorian idea that women
are frail and delicate creatures and need to subsist only
on biscuits and bland t I'm I'm you know, editorializing
there a little bit, but the idea that they didn't
(20:05):
need any kind of robust flavors or anything, or any
you know, hearty um food. They just needed the word
is bland nourishment. That that was in the archives. Um.
And in eighteen sixty six she wrote this letter to
Vaster's president, and she complained that new students were getting
too many packages from home with unhealthy foods and treats.
(20:30):
Since she wrote this, the short supply and improper selection
of food during the first months had the effect of
exalting eating into a prominent theme of conversation and of
perpetuating a habit I had hoped measurably to eradicate love
old letters of receiving boxes from home. Um, yeah, so
(20:52):
that's where she was coming from. Boxes from home, by
the way, is italicized so picked her it as occur word. Yeah,
you know, I think a lot of us who are
in college now or are planning to go to college,
or have attended. Uh know that food is food has
always been more than just nutrition, right, Food is conversation,
(21:16):
breaking bread not for nothing? Do some of the oldest
works of literature talk about the importance of eating together. Um,
So these students, these kids, some of the best and
brightest in the country, weren't content to sit around with
the equivalent of just uh, I guess the plane non
spiced food. Like we all look, I'll say it, we
(21:37):
all hear that stereotype nowadays about you know, quote unquote
white people not spicing their food. Not only was this
happening at vaster but they they had like a scientific,
they're perceived scientific basis for that. I don't know, is
that going too far? Like they explicitly say, bland food
and lack of spices. Did you say that, no question
(21:59):
about it? Okay, okay, so they said that we're not
making that up. But anyway, in this fertile cultural soil,
ellicit fudge parties begin. So these kids, who again are brilliant,
they say, look, if we can't get the kind of
cool stuff we want, the kind of sweets we want
or something, then will begin making them for ourselves. And
(22:22):
this is very mcgiver and it's as dangerous as that
dryer we were talking about earlier off air. That's an
Easter egg for just the three of us. I guess
um they would take their their gaslights that they used
in their dorms at night and they would use the
gas from the gaslight where they would use spirit lamps
from the chemistry lab to heat up these confections and
(22:44):
they would like make fudge basically with the stuff they
could find in their rumor on campus. Yeah, at great
like physical peril to themselves and others. I mean, think
about it. They're using these very dangerous like lab items
in a dorm arm that could easily be you know
what if they get into the throes of fudge ecstasy
(23:05):
and they're like fudge drunk and then they knock over
a Bunsen burner and the whole place goes up. You know,
I'm just speculating here, but uh, surely fudge drunkenness is
a thing. But luckily it didn't happen, But it was
controversial activity. These were considered illicit fudge parties. Oh no, no, no, no, no,
uh hold the fudge, hold the fudge phone. Casey just
(23:29):
pointed something out off Mike the Casey. I feel like
you have to you have to be on air. We
want to be transparent. You have you have admonished us,
and quite correctly. You know, it's one of those things
where we're we're rounding the thirty minute mark and uh,
the ending is nowhere in sight. So I think we
all know what that means. I think it is a
bifurcated podcast that we're that we're doing right now. And hey,
(23:52):
not gonna lie. Uh that is perfectly serendipitous because all
three of us, I think, are out on vacation next week.
So hey, you gotta feed the content monster. And I
think this one actually is worthy, much more so than
I realized on the on the onset that there's a
lot of stuff wrapped up in in fudge, not literally
but just you know, historically speaking sometimes literally though, I
(24:15):
think that's a good point. Yeah, we have so much
more fudge to get to. We have so much to
sling there we go, we have we have so much
more fudge to unpack, to to heat up this. We
have not yet begun to fudge. It's true, so we
are going to make this a super parter. So please
join us for the studying conclusion to this fudge saga
(24:37):
on the next episode of Ridiculous History. In the meantime,
hughes thanks to producer Casey Pegraham, Alex Williams who composed
our theme, and of course Christopher haciotis here in spirit.
Big Old thanks to Gabe Muisier, who I will I
will title as the Emperor of Fudge in a tangential
Wallace Stevens reference uh and big thanks of worse as
(25:00):
always to our pure podcaster Eve's Jeff Coke. While you're
waiting for part two of our continuing fudge stravaganza, why
not check out her show This Day in History. You
can also continue the conversation with your favorite or at
least favorite fudge recipes on the internet with the best
part of this show, your fellow listeners. Find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.
(25:22):
Check out Ridiculous Historians on Facebook and pro tip you
can find us as individuals if you would. If you
would like to send us your best worst fudge puns,
It's true, you can find me exclusively on Instagram where
I am at how Now Noel Brown and you can
find me on Twitter where I'm at Ben Bolland hs W.
You can find me on Instagram where I am at
(25:45):
Ben Bolland. Who knows. Maybe I'll try this mash potato
fludge recipe I found and post the results. You see
you next time. Books. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
(26:06):
your favorite shows
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show Ridiculous Historians. As always, thank you so
much for tuning in. My name is Ben. This is
an interesting one today. I gotta ask, um, you know,
when you hear the word fudge, what do you think
of inferior chocolate? Here we go, Uh, super producer, Casey Pegrom,
(00:50):
what about you? I like fudge, So I'm gonna say
it is a not a superior chocolate per se, but
you know it's on equal footing with milk chocolate or
chocolate or any of the other fine chocolate products. That
to disagree, my friend, I will I will say, like
I do have experiences of going to like Helen Georgia
(01:10):
and like getting fudged there and it's just too much.
It's just too heavy and you feel sick for like
the rest of the day after you consume it. So moderation,
But um, yeah, I like, I like a little fudge now.
And then I guess my thing is I'm known by
the way, I just don't know what it is like
is it's like it's almost chocolate, it's almost caramel, it's
bordering on cake. It's just it occupies this liminal space
(01:32):
of confections that I just can't quite wrap my head around. Yeah, yeah,
that that's my take on fudge. It's also a fun
substitute word for a naughty word aspect of it. It's funny.
We Uh, we were supposed to start recording about a
half hour ago, but we ended up just shooting the
breeze about multiple things, including the most famous use of
(01:54):
fudge as a curse word I think was in the
Christmas Story. Uh. And you're right, I like the freeze
liminal space here because I like, maybe like you k cy,
I like many people associate fudge with stuff you would
see in like a country store on a rural road trip,
next to the pepper jelly or whatever. And I think
(02:14):
most of us associate fudge with chocolate. But it doesn't
have to be right. There's maple fudge. There's all kinds
of fudge in there, like a seventies kind of southern
rock band called Vanilla Fudge. Oh. Absolutely, there is anybody
that saw the Tarantino movie once by a time in Hollywood.
The climax of that movie is a vanilla fudge. Oh
(02:36):
that's the uh set me for you? Why don't you
babe that that whole thing's somebody else's song, but it's
their version, and if you go on YouTube and look
up the live version, it is the most seventies thing
you will ever see in your life. I love it. Well,
we've got to stop the show for a second because
we have to check out Vanilla Fudge. I can't believe
someone beat us to that name. We're gonna have to
come up with something new for our band. But while
(02:58):
we're exploring that, we have to tell you, I don't
know about you, guys, but I just found out that
I didn't know anything about fudge, like the history of fudge,
the actual origin story, in the genesis of it. Fudge
is first off, much more recent invention than I had thought.
I don't know about you guys. And secondly, as we're
(03:19):
gonna find today, fudge was in its heyday associated not
with like rural country stores or cracker barrels or whatever,
but it was associated instead with a bit of rebellion. Yeah,
it's true. I didn't realize it was such a relatively
modern invention too. I assumed it was like developed on
the prairie by the pioneers, you know, or even earlier
(03:42):
than that. It's just I just assumed fudge should always
kind of been you know, you you'd turn your butter
and you'd make your fudge. But that's not the case
at all. Um, let's start with a little bit of etymology.
Fudge it wasn't the other way around. Fudge wasn't a
word derived from the chocolate a thing. It was the
other way around. Fudge was a verb before it was
(04:04):
a confection around the seventeenth century. Um, it was something
you would use to say, Oh, I'm gonna fudge that,
you know, sort of cheat something to the left or
to the right a little bit like maybe you've got
some woodworking that you're doing. I don't know, just an example,
and you need to fudge two pieces so they become flush.
That's not a great example, obviously, I'm not a carpenter.
Bank can you think of a better example of fudging
(04:24):
something in the physical sense? Yeah, I think the woodworking
example is good. I think that I don't know how
accessible this is to our fellow listeners, but I think
the three of all us have all fudged a little
something in production where we maybe don't have the ideal
audio we wants, but we're like we could play with
this a little bit, so we've been able to fudge around.
(04:48):
You know, it's interesting because etymologists now think that fudge
came from an older, obsolete term fadge, which sounds like
fudge with a weird New England accent f A d
G right, exactly, f A d G E with the
silent e, which I still don't understand. One of the
(05:09):
great mysteries of the English language, the silent e. But
that's the story for another day. Yeah, the Oxford English Dictionary. Um,
there's an article on the invention of fudge on Chowhound
and they referred to that entry where it describes fudge
or fadge as meaning to fit together or even the
idea of something turning out well, the implication maybe being
(05:31):
despite less than ideal circumstances. But the implication is more
that it wasn't about a mistake exactly. But we also
know that there is at least legend fudge legend uh
fudging about the idea that someone was trying to make
a batch of caramels. As I was saying earlier, like
(05:51):
what is fudge and they ended up with fudge? Um,
because fudge contains sugar crystals, and that's actually something that
kind of is a no no in baking. For the
most part, you don't want there to be sugar crystals
because that can give a grainy kind of texture, and
fudge is sort of the exception to that rule. Uh.
It's these micro crystals of sugar that give it that
(06:13):
firm texture, and they're small enough so they do melt
in your mouth and they don't feel weird and sand
like on your tongue, but they melt so quickly that
it has sort of a smooth consistency. And I think
that's part of my weirdness with fudge, is the consistency.
It doesn't act quite like chocolate because the crystals are there.
It's a little bigger, so it has more of a
(06:34):
I don't know, gloopy kind of thing. I don't want
to nag fudge for anybody, but clearly, yeah, it's uh
it's got almost a paste like consistency. Uh. For anyone
familiar with um, the Middle Eastern North African food hulva,
which is a popular snack, it's like that. Uh. That
might not be the best comparison, but you're spot on
(06:57):
with the weird state and importance of the sugar crystals.
So in a previous episode, we we endeavored to clumsily
teach you how to whistle, and you, guys, I listened
back to that part. It's actually it was worth it.
It was pretty hilarious. I made my kid listen to it.
I held the phone up to her ear just during
(07:19):
the mouth sounds part, and she just made the most
offended face. But then she started laughing uncontrollably, because it's
just it's I don't know, not to like talk about ourselves,
but it is simultaneously disgusting and endearing, you know. For
that one, I think it's okay for us to talk
about ourselves this way, because we're not saying we did
a good job. I think the fun part of that
(07:43):
was the brilliant fact that none of the three of
us pointed out that maybe we shouldn't try to explain
how to put fingers in our mouths while we were
doing it. But but still, it's pretty hilarious. So now
we're gonna attempt to teach you the secret to cooking udge.
This is with help from the Exploratorium. So now that
(08:04):
you've mastered that weird problematic wolf whistle, it's time to
begin your fudge career. Likenell said, you want these crystals
to form. Forget all the other stuff you hear about candy.
This is not applied to fudge. But you want them
to form at a certain time, as certain temperatures. So
if you want to avoid that gross kind of grainy fudge,
(08:27):
it's not so much how you cook it as it
is how you cool it. So you'll see a fudge
recipe that will call for just in general, call for
heating all the ingredients to two hundred and thirty four
degrees fahrenheit. That's what's called the softball stage, where you
can kind of mold it and then you allow it
to cool, don't touch it, allow it to cool to
(08:48):
about a hundred and ten degrees fahrenheit, and then when
it hits one ten, that's when you start stirring. And
you keep stirring and stirring and stirring as the candy
becomes thicker and thicker and thicker. And what's happening is
every time you stir, you're creating more crystal seeds, and
you get lots and lots of tiny ones instead of
(09:08):
the big ones. And I think that that goes to
the texture you're talking about, right, Yeah, it absolutely does.
And you know, if you stirch too much, you don't
get the crystals at all, I guess, or there's so
many of them that doesn't give you the same consistency.
Don't stir enough, it becomes grainy and unpleasant. So it
really is. I mean, honestly, fudge making is kind of
an art, you know, if you have to really keep
(09:29):
an eye on the temperature. Uh, it's not something that
you can just go in and do without knowing what
you're doing. So kudos to all the fudge stirs the
fudge and I don't know what's what's the word for
a fudge maker, fudge enthusiast. I like it. I like it,
But you're right, Casey. I do think about, like, you know,
the little candy stores on the boardwalk in Savannah or
(09:50):
in Hell and where you can get a free sample,
you know, and you can see their whole assembly line
for like making fudge and prelins or saltwater taffy and
all that. That's definitely what I think of when I
think of this treat. So yeah, like chocolate caramels could
(10:10):
be seen as being kind of the progenitor, is that
the right word or the precursor I guess to to
to fudge, and those have been around since the eighteen sixties.
We found a recipe uh in an eighteen seventy cookbook
from Maryland, um very very similar process. Uh So totally
understand the notion that fudge was created by fudging this
(10:33):
caramel recipe, because if you end up with these crystals
like we're talking about, which you would not want in
a sticky, chewy kind of caramel, you would end up
with a little bit more of a crumbly and substantial
kind of like we said, fudgie. Really for lack of
I mean, that's really it's the best word for it,
because that's kind of what it is. Really nothing else
quite like it, and that's one theory behind it. But
(10:57):
we really still aren't quite a hundred percent sure of
who truly invented the dessert. But we do know is
where it came from, which is a college, Vassar University
in eighteen nine two or thereabouts. Yeah, be not confused, folks,
Fudge is marketed in a dishonest way. Fudge is a
(11:21):
food of the elite. Okay, it's not. It wasn't a
case where somebody was selling produce on the side of
the road and accidentally also made fudge. No, this comes
from a storied institution, like you said, Noel Uh. The
earliest origin of it dates back to a document by
(11:41):
one Immelin Battersby Heartridge. She wrote a letter describing her
encounter with fudge. But she says this happened while she
was attending classes at Vassar in the eighties eight eight six.
But she says there was already fudge in play. There
was a store in Baltimore that was selling it for
(12:02):
like forty cents a pound, So we know it originated
around that time, but we don't know exactly who invented it.
For a long time, Heartridge was credited with inventing the
substance fudge, but Vasser itself disagrees. They have an article
in their encyclopedia called Vasser Myths and Legends that says, essentially,
(12:23):
look Emmelyn Heartridge described fudge. That's the first known written
account we have of fudge. But she in her own
letter said that she got the instructions to make it
from someone else. Well good on Vassar were trying to
set the record straight and not just you know, co
opting fudge for themselves, because we know that Vasser has
(12:46):
a really interesting history when it comes to food. Was
originally a women's college. Now it's a co ed private school.
UM that happened in a nineteen sixty nine pretty recently.
Was founded in eighteen sixty one by Matthew Asser. UM
very remarkable architecture. Uh. There's a pub on the campus
called the Mug for short, which is the full name
(13:09):
is Matthews Mug named after the the owner and founder,
who is a brewer. And Vasser, as many of you
will know, is located in one of my favorite cities
to say out loud in New York, but Keepsie. And
it's fun to look at because it looks like it
would be spelled poof Keepsie because it's p o U
g h k e E p s i E. But
it's Pokeepsie. It's a good one. I'm a shoeboygan man myself,
(13:32):
but that's just because of our our recent episode. Um,
you know what, one day, forget it. One day, let's
just do an episode, perhaps a listener mail episode, where
we just read off weird place names. I don't know
about you, guys. It's always hilarious to me when we
have someone right in and they're like, you know that
(13:52):
weird cacophonous agglomeration of consonants and vowels that you tried
to pronounce is actually pronounced papoloia And you're like, no,
there's not a p in there. Those are all g
anyway proper names. So there's another one in like Boston,
for example, that's you know, it looks peabody, but they
say it's pbody, pbody, pbody. You know, who's to know
(14:14):
unless you've heard it spoken, unless you grew up in
that area. But you know, our listeners are always super
respectful when they correct us, and we appreciate that. I
want to do this before we move on. UM. I
don't know about u k s here, you know, but
being a nerd, I spent the vast majority of things
I learned I learned by reading, which doesn't help with pronunciation, right.
Uh So I want to give a shout out to
(14:35):
the person who wrote to us on our if you
guys are our wolf Whistle episode and said it's pronounced Boson,
not boatswain, So we see, we hear you, thank you.
It was all of us what that now. I don't
accept that. I reject that someone made a horrible mistake.
They did, But I mean, what is a living language
(14:58):
but a mixed tape of horrible mistakes that we all accepted.
But it's a boat job. It's a job that takes
place on a boat. How can you take the boat
out of this boat job? It's yeah, it's weird. There's
so many maritime traditions, you know what I mean? And
boatswain has pronounced boson. So there we have it. Which
(15:18):
I learned something anyway, Speaking of learning, back to Poughkeepsie.
So it's interesting because Vassar has this fascinating history with
food and it exists before fudge. We would introduce you
to one Ellen Swallow Richards class of eighteen seventy, widely
acknowledged as America's first professional female chemist. Not the first
(15:42):
female chemist, of course, just the first one who had
the full time job doing it. And one thing that
she is known for today was a book she wrote
called Food as a Factor in Student Life. This convinced
the Boston School Committee to change its usual pol sees
about diet. She was so ahead of her time, you know,
(16:04):
even I think we've all even in recent years, uh
started to understand the link between nutrition and development, especially
in kids, right in elementary schools and middle schools. Uh,
this goes on when you're in college. And she has
a quote she went to the Women's Congress at the
eight ninety three Chicago's World Fair and raised an excellent point.
(16:27):
I don't know, you want to do the honors? Sure? Yeah.
And I think it's interesting too because we know that
there's a history of college students eating like trash. You know,
the idea of like ramen and and you know Kraft mcarnie.
And she's pervades to this day because it's like a
period where you don't really have a lot of money
and you're kind of trying to let just make it
on what you've got. So definitely an argument that continues
(16:48):
to be part of student life, right. Um. And she
was really ahead of the curve. So she says the following.
A cow is worth to the state perhaps a hundred
dollars a year. A trained my mind, one hundred thousand
dollars a year. A nation which so carefully feeds its
cattle should take care of its young men and women
with promising brains. In fact, the future of our nation
(17:12):
may be said to depend on the feeding of the
students now in the schools. Yep, yeah, and that's I mean,
she makes an excellent point, and you make an excellent
point as well. No, the only thing that I am
not with you on is that Ramen is amazing cheap ramen.
I I want to thank my college days and my
(17:34):
like my traveling hobo days, for lack of a better word,
for teaching me how amazing. Robin is you a little
sesame oil and that bad boy a soft boiled egg. Well, yeah,
of course it tastes good. Bad I love ramen, but
the sodium content is like through the roof of the
noodles are deep fried, and you know, it's just like
there's really nothing of value and its unless you, you know,
(17:54):
sex it up a little bit and add a little
cabbage or a little vegetable or a soft boiled egg.
Like you said, that is the beauty of ramen. Though
it's very adaptable. But I don't think that kids and
dorms are doing a whole lot of that's true. Oh gosh, yeah,
that's true. And you make a good point about nutrition.
I just I just have to go to bat fork Man,
I missed going out to like a Ramen place, but
(18:15):
you're right, You're right, And Richards has this interest in
the science of nutrition right now. Historians believe this is
partially inspired by some classes she took with Vassar's professor
of astronomy, Maria Mitchell. Maria Mitchell held weekly gatherings for
(18:40):
her classes at her own apartment, which was inside the observatory.
How cool is that? And students really look forward to
this time because they would have kind of a social visit,
almost a salon, right, They would drink coffee, they would
have you know, cookies and snacks or and then they
(19:01):
would get to meet Professor Mitchell's friends, right, her fellow
intellectuals who included, uh, quite prominent activists and forward thinkers
like Elizabeth Katie Stanton and Lucy Stone Blackwell. This was
a great opportunity for these kids. But there's a question
was were they there because they wanted to learn more
(19:23):
about the suffrage movement uh and abolition and other progressive policies,
or were they there because Ms. Mitchell's cookies were better
fair than they could get normally. Yeah, it's a good question. Um.
Vassar has all these great resources like the encyclopedia we
talked about, and and a and a very um intense
(19:44):
archive that shows that Hannah Lionman, who's the college's first
woman principle, really was into this Victorian idea that women
are frail and delicate creatures and need to subsist only
on biscuits and bland t I'm I'm you know, editorializing
there a little bit, but the idea that they didn't
(20:05):
need any kind of robust flavors or anything, or any
you know, hearty um food. They just needed the word
is bland nourishment. That that was in the archives. Um.
And in eighteen sixty six she wrote this letter to
Vaster's president, and she complained that new students were getting
too many packages from home with unhealthy foods and treats.
(20:30):
Since she wrote this, the short supply and improper selection
of food during the first months had the effect of
exalting eating into a prominent theme of conversation and of
perpetuating a habit I had hoped measurably to eradicate love
old letters of receiving boxes from home. Um, yeah, so
(20:52):
that's where she was coming from. Boxes from home, by
the way, is italicized so picked her it as occur word. Yeah,
you know, I think a lot of us who are
in college now or are planning to go to college,
or have attended. Uh know that food is food has
always been more than just nutrition, right, Food is conversation,
(21:16):
breaking bread not for nothing? Do some of the oldest
works of literature talk about the importance of eating together. Um,
So these students, these kids, some of the best and
brightest in the country, weren't content to sit around with
the equivalent of just uh, I guess the plane non
spiced food. Like we all look, I'll say it, we
(21:37):
all hear that stereotype nowadays about you know, quote unquote
white people not spicing their food. Not only was this
happening at vaster but they they had like a scientific,
they're perceived scientific basis for that. I don't know, is
that going too far? Like they explicitly say, bland food
and lack of spices. Did you say that, no question
(21:59):
about it? Okay, okay, so they said that we're not
making that up. But anyway, in this fertile cultural soil,
ellicit fudge parties begin. So these kids, who again are brilliant,
they say, look, if we can't get the kind of
cool stuff we want, the kind of sweets we want
or something, then will begin making them for ourselves. And
(22:22):
this is very mcgiver and it's as dangerous as that
dryer we were talking about earlier off air. That's an
Easter egg for just the three of us. I guess
um they would take their their gaslights that they used
in their dorms at night and they would use the
gas from the gaslight where they would use spirit lamps
from the chemistry lab to heat up these confections and
(22:44):
they would like make fudge basically with the stuff they
could find in their rumor on campus. Yeah, at great
like physical peril to themselves and others. I mean, think
about it. They're using these very dangerous like lab items
in a dorm arm that could easily be you know
what if they get into the throes of fudge ecstasy
(23:05):
and they're like fudge drunk and then they knock over
a Bunsen burner and the whole place goes up. You know,
I'm just speculating here, but uh, surely fudge drunkenness is
a thing. But luckily it didn't happen, But it was
controversial activity. These were considered illicit fudge parties. Oh no, no, no, no, no,
uh hold the fudge, hold the fudge phone. Casey just
(23:29):
pointed something out off Mike the Casey. I feel like
you have to you have to be on air. We
want to be transparent. You have you have admonished us,
and quite correctly. You know, it's one of those things
where we're we're rounding the thirty minute mark and uh,
the ending is nowhere in sight. So I think we
all know what that means. I think it is a
bifurcated podcast that we're that we're doing right now. And hey,
(23:52):
not gonna lie. Uh that is perfectly serendipitous because all
three of us, I think, are out on vacation next week.
So hey, you gotta feed the content monster. And I
think this one actually is worthy, much more so than
I realized on the on the onset that there's a
lot of stuff wrapped up in in fudge, not literally
but just you know, historically speaking sometimes literally though, I
(24:15):
think that's a good point. Yeah, we have so much
more fudge to get to. We have so much to
sling there we go, we have we have so much
more fudge to unpack, to to heat up this. We
have not yet begun to fudge. It's true, so we
are going to make this a super parter. So please
join us for the studying conclusion to this fudge saga
(24:37):
on the next episode of Ridiculous History. In the meantime,
hughes thanks to producer Casey Pegraham, Alex Williams who composed
our theme, and of course Christopher haciotis here in spirit.
Big Old thanks to Gabe Muisier, who I will I
will title as the Emperor of Fudge in a tangential
Wallace Stevens reference uh and big thanks of worse as
(25:00):
always to our pure podcaster Eve's Jeff Coke. While you're
waiting for part two of our continuing fudge stravaganza, why
not check out her show This Day in History. You
can also continue the conversation with your favorite or at
least favorite fudge recipes on the internet with the best
part of this show, your fellow listeners. Find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.
(25:22):
Check out Ridiculous Historians on Facebook and pro tip you
can find us as individuals if you would. If you
would like to send us your best worst fudge puns,
It's true, you can find me exclusively on Instagram where
I am at how Now Noel Brown and you can
find me on Twitter where I'm at Ben Bolland hs W.
You can find me on Instagram where I am at
(25:45):
Ben Bolland. Who knows. Maybe I'll try this mash potato
fludge recipe I found and post the results. You see
you next time. Books. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
(26:06):
your favorite shows
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