My grandmother is not the best cook in our family (that distinction goes to my Aunt Annette, as my grandmother freely admits). But Grammie Ethel does have two or three dishes that have won her an honored place in the family culinary pantheon. The first is a chicken noodle soup you fairly ache for when you have a cold. The second is a cookie so buttery and crisp, family members have almost come to fisticuffs over who gets the last one. But the most formidable weapon in her culinary arsenal is Grammie Ethel's Chocolate Fudge.
This truth was made apparent for me on a recent visit to Baltimore, where I grew up and where my grandmother still lives. We pulled out the ancient pot she has used for fudge-making since she was a newlywed. We stood by the stove, side by side, boiling the milk and sugar, adding the chocolate at precisely the right moment, and beating the fudge just enough to make it creamy, but not so much that it breaks. We poured the molten fudge into a battered pie pan that has served since my father was in diapers. And once it had hardened, we bit into fudge that is equally remarkable for its rich, deep, intensely chocolatey flavor as it is for its lack of sugary cloy.
When it comes to fudge, Baltimore isn't a bad place to come from. According to food historian John Mariani, the candy may well have originated in this city at the top of Chesapeake Bay. In his Dictionary of American Food and Drink (Hearst Books), Mr. Mariani quotes a letter in the Vassar College archives written by an alumna, one Emelyn Hartridge, who maintains that fudge was first made in Baltimore by a schoolmate's cousin. Hartridge goes on to recall a grocery store there, which in 1886, sold the confection for 40 cents a pound.
Fudge seems to have achieved its first widespread popularity at New England womens' colleges in the early 1900s. Cookbooks of the period abound with recipes for the likes of Vassar fudge, Smith College fudge and Wellesley fudge. Divinity fudge, which is flavored with candied cherries and lightened with egg whites, came into existence around 1910. "The new candy . . . was undoubtedly responsible for helping many students gain their 'freshman fifteen,' " writes Mr. Mariani. The "fifteen" referred to the number of pounds put on by many students during their freshman year in college.
Actually, the word "fudge" has been around a lot longer. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, in the 1760s fudge was uttered as an "inarticulate expression of indignant disgust," of "contemptible nonsense." This use survives today in the way a prim person might exclaim, "Oh, fudge!"
The august dictionary traces the second meaning of the word fudge, "to make up" or "falsify," to an 18th-century seaman named -- I kid you not -- Captain Fudge. The captain could always be counted on to bring the ship's owners "a good cargo of lies," wrote an 18th-century wag.
In newspaper parlance, a "fudge box" was a device attached to a printing press that allowed late news to be inserted while the press was still running. It wasn't until 1896 that the word was first used to describe candy.
As for the chocolate, it comes from the seeds of a tropical tree whose Latin name, appropriately enough, is "theobroma" ("food of the gods"). When Columbus sampled chocolate on his fourth expedition in 1502, he didn't particularly like it. Cortez was more impressed 17 years later when he tasted "xocolatl" (literally "bitter water"), a beverage flavored with chilies and honey and chilled with mountain snow. The name of this beverage is the origin of our word "chocolate." Thousands of chalices of the drink were said to be served at the court of Montezuma each day.
Spanish explorers introduced chocolate to Europe, where it met with mixed reviews. A Spanish inquisitor accused the women of New Spain of "committing an infinite number of crimes under the influence of chocolate." In 1624, one Joan Fran Rauch blamed a sex scandal among monastic orders on "this violent inflamer of passions." A century later Madame du Barry served Louis XV an aphrodisiac prepared with cocoa beans and ambergris.
As it turns out, there may be some scientific basis to chocolate's alleged aphrodisiac properties. Cocoa beans contain an alkaloid called theobromine, which is similar in its effects to caffeine. It dilates the bronchioles and blood vessels of the brain and heart and stimulates digestive secretions. Chocolate also contains a chemical called phenylethylamine, which has an amphetamine-like effect on mood. There may, indeed, be more to the association of chocolate and love than myth or superstition.
Which is a handy thing to know as Valentine's Day approaches. Other men may give their sweeties a box of Godiva on this special day for lovers, but I'm going to call Grammie Ethel and whip up a batch of fudge!
Grammie Ethel's
Chocolate Fudge
Makes 18 to 20 pieces
1 1/4 cups sugar
3/4 cup milk
4 ounces unsweetened chocolate (Grammie uses Baker's)
5 tablespoons salted butter, cut into 1/2 inch slices
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
Bring sugar and milk to rolling boil in heavy saucepan over high heat. Boil until sugar is dissolved, about 2 minutes. Remove pan from heat and stir in chocolate with wooden spoon. Return to heat and cook until chocolate is completely melted, stirring often. Boil mixture 2 minutes.
Stir in butter and vanilla. Reduce heat to medium and cook fudge at slow boil until thick and bubbly, 15 to 20 minutes. Mixture should be consistency of caramel, and butter should be just beginning to separate out in shiny beads.
Remove pan from heat and beat fudge until slightly thickened (it should be consistency of soft ice cream. Mixture should remain soft and creamy.) Do not over-beat or fudge will be crumbly. Spoon fudge into lightly oiled 8-inch pie pan. Cut it into squares while still warm.
Steven Raichlen is the author of "Miami Spice" (Workman), and the director of a cooking school in St. Barths in the Caribbean.