THE JOY AND SCIENCE OF MAKING FUDGE

My mother would drive me crazy when she would try and explain the principles of soft ball. No not so much the sport you understand but fudge. My mother made the best fudge in the world. On this I will broker no argument.  When setting it developed a shiny chocolate brown patina and when you broke off a piece it snapped. No soft creamy fudge here but firm with character. 

She always added a touch of salt to balance out the sugar and bring out the rich chocolate notes from the cocoa. It was nirvana and at twelve I wanted to learn how to make it and quickly. Mum would not deviate from the golden rules though and there were no short cuts. Fudge had to hit a temperature just over 235F, soft ball stage, or it would not set and the required grainy texture could not be achieved. It was also critical once the temperature was reached that is was beaten off the heat for a few minutes before decanting or the texture could be compromised. This she explained was not the sexy side of cooking but the science of cooking and without understanding it I would be doomed. Science in cooking  could this be true? Cooking was fun and pleasurable. Science was none of these things and I was patently not interested. Give me fudge and give it to me now. Under duress I followed the rules but I was not interested in the why for a long time. Years later it was a dry cured bacon that changed my mind. The bacon flavour was so complex and interesting so much better than a wet brine bacon. Why was that? A friend told me if you want to understand this then you need Harold McGee and his book On Food and Cooking all about the science and lore of the kitchen. McGee looked at the science of food and the effect of cooking on particular foods. He challenged conventional wisdom and explained why. He explained the structure of foods and how processing could change them. He revealed how to achieve the best results, for example a crispy skin on a chicken by dissolving the leathery collagen into tender gelatin in the skin's water and then vaporising the water out of the skin. It was at this point that Harold and I became friends. If I understood the alchemy I could improve my cooking and my food. His prose was not too technical or intimidating. The chapters were by food groups and if I had an issue with eggs I just looked up the egg chapter. Harold told why I had loved the dry cured bacon much more than the wet brine product. It turned out this it was all about glutamic acid caused by the flavourless proteins breaking down into savoury peptides and amino acids. The result was notes of melon, caramel and umami that created just plain deliciousness to invade the palate. In a food crisis Harold was my go to guy and he republished an updated version in 2004 I was thrilled. And of course Harold has a chapter on sugar. It turns out the best temperature for fudge is 235F-240F which is all about the evaporation of the water molecules but the real danger point is in the cooling and how the sugar crystals bond. So beating can help with this process. So it turns out my mother was right all along. Harold taught me that.