Fudge

[Stephen Goranson]

The 1893 Vassar citation of fudges noted by Barry Popik is so far the earliest
I've seen of fudge (food noun) as it's now known (OED n. 5) and the
earliest of
many women's college references, including a Llamarada 1899 "Cheap Recipe for
Fudge" from Mount Holyoak College (at google books). Of course, the day the
first batch of fudge was cooked is not necessarily the same day it was named
fudge. So an earlier recipe could exist without that name. And, apparently,
there is an earlier food noun fudge mentioned in various certainly pre-1886
editions (some at google) of the tales of Baron Munchausen. If it's true that
the first edition in English was 1785 (I'm not sure), and if that includes the
fudge mania story, then that would predate the earliest of all OED noun cites,
1791. But the Munchausen fudge, kept in grainaries and scattered,
though a food
said in the story to be sought after and dreamt of, might not match any of the
OED definitions. Would it be a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy to suggest
that the story fudge influenced the later recipe name choice?

Stephen Goranson
http://www.duke.edu/~goranson

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