Tag Archives: fudge

“Oh… fudge.”

Maury trudged out from the kitchen of Domus Logogustationis. His apron and various parts of his physiognomy were smudged. In fact, they were smeared with a sort of sludge.

“A bad day for the kitchen drudge?” I said.

“Don’t judge.”

“Oh, I don’t begrudge a bit of mess in the making of good things,” I said. “But… what is it you’re producing?”

He paused for a moment, looked over his smirched appearance, and raised an eyebrow.

I gave a verbal nudge: “My nose says it’s sweet.”

“And sticky,” Maury said.

“And apparently chocolate.”

“Well,” Maury said, “I was attempting the Vassar recipe.”

“Ah,” I said. “Fudge indeed.” Vassar College is widely credited as, if not the birthplace, then at least an early vector of fudge, and the recipe is readily available.

“Well, in thought and perhaps in word,” Maury said. “But in deed, well, you judge.” He ducked into the kitchen and came back out with a bowl in which an uneven dark slurry oozed unfortunately. “As you see, it will not fadge.”

Here is where I insert a little etymological explication: fadge, a now disused verb meaning ‘make do, be suitable, agree, get along’, is generally thought to be the origin of the word fudge. Or at least it’s the origin of the verb fudge as in ‘fake, cheat, cut corners, approximate, misrepresent’ – as the Oxford English Dictionary says, fudge is an alteration of fadge “with vowel expressive of more clumsy action.” The interjection “Fudge!” may or may not borrow from that, but it takes little effort to think of another word it is euphemizing. The family name Fudge is unrelated to fadge, but may have been at least a partial origin or model for one or more of the uses of fudge. And the confection? Probably drawing on the ‘make do’ sense, but we can’t be entirely certain… all of the etymologies involve, yes, a certain amount of fudging.

Which making fudge probably should not. 

“It appears to have broken,” I said.

“I found that we did not have all the specific ingredients required, so I tried to…” Maury looked at the bowl and pursed his lips, searching for a way not to be trite and repetitious, but the word lodged in his cortex wouldn’t budge.

“Make do with a substitute,” I said.

“Indeed,” Maury said. “Several substitutes. We had only icing sugar. We had only pure dark chocolate. We had only, for some reason, margarine. We had only, for reasons that escape me, low-fat milk.”

“No cream?”

“No cream. No evaporated milk. What have we come to, James.”

“We have come to the kitchen without having shopped for the necessary ingredients,” I said.

“Oh, and no thermometer.”

“And yet you went ahead.”

“Don’t judge! I was taken by a fancy. Also, I wanted to have some for tonight’s event. When it failed to budge, I thought perhaps the addition of some elbow grease would resolve the problem.”

“Meaning you stirred the heck out of it.”

“I would rather say,” Maury said, holding the bowl up, “the heck is all that’s left.”

“Well, fudge indeed. And now we are without.”

At that moment the doorbell rang. Maury handed me the unfortunate bowl and went to it. It was a food delivery driver, who handed a nicely wrapped package to Maury. Maury said thanks, took it, closed the door, and then set it down on a side table and took out his phone to acknowledge receipt. I looked at the package. It was a pound or so of quality fudge. I looked up at Maury and raised an eyebrow.

“Don’t judge!” Maury said. “I think it is perfectly fungible.” He took the bowl from me and went over to a serving plate that had been waiting empty; he dipped a finger in the bowl and smudged the plate a bit with it – to give it a home-handled air, apparently. He looked again at me. “Now would you like to help me arrange my fudge, and dispose of the evidence?”