Passion fruit fudge

According to experts, fudge was invented on American soil, but there is no exact date, only that it was more than a hundred years ago.

However, a recipe was found from 1886 that belonged to Emelyn B. Hartridge, a student at Vassar College and that, due to its ingredients, would have been the first fudge ever prepared.

Experienced researchers say that in a letter Miss Hartridge wrote in 1921, she told that in 1886 she bought a box of fudge for 40 cents a pound at a shop in Baltimore, Maryland and so that the remaining material would not be damaged by time, she took the opportunity to mix it with the other ingredients.

This gave rise to something he decided to call “fudge”, to refer to the “arrangement” she made with the ingredients.

She was a student at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, and said she brought the box with the “arrangement” there in 1888, of which she sold a batch for £30.

Also in another student’s diary there was mention that in 1892 “fudges” were made. And then in another letter, but from 1893, another student of Vassar College described “fudges” containing sugar, chocolate, milk and butter.

Also later, in 1895, a recipe appeared in print for the “Fudges at Vassar” section in The Sun newspaper about the product.

Despite describing the sweet as “Vassar chocolates”, the recipe presented included the ingredients of sugar, milk, butter and vanilla extract.

Very soon word of this sweet, which became popular in that environment, spread to other women’s colleges and, for example, Wellesley College and Smith College also made their own versions from a fudge recipe dating back to the late 19th or early 20th century.

In this way, fudge making began to develop with a wide variety of flavours and additives as its popularity grew in universities.

In short, fudge was the result of splicing something and reassembling it so as not to lose it. This gave rise to its name.

Today fudge is manufactured in the most important tourist locations in the United States, such as Mackinac Island and other cities in northern Michigan, and has even spread to other latitudes with the original fudge and the versions created in other countries.