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Enjoy this curated selection of theme-related dances for celebrations and holidays, or find a dance associated with a special calendar day, or EVEN your own birthday!
Jun 16
Fudge and Tablet Day
Double Fudge
Other Scottish Country Dances for this Day
Today's Musings, History & Folklore
"Always serve too much hot fudge sauce on hot fudge sundaes. It makes people overjoyed, and puts them in your debt."
~Judith Olney
Fudge or Double Fudge, dancers? Most people of a certain age recognize fudge as a rich sugar candy—often chocolate-flavored—made by combining sugar, butter, and milk, heating the mixture to the soft-ball stage, then beating it as it cools to produce a smooth, creamy texture. Tablet is fudge's Scottish cousin, with a more crumbly, grainy, and brittle character.
The word itself, however, long predates the confection. Since at least the seventeenth century, "fudge" has been used as slang for nonsense, humbug, or outright fabrication. Sir Walter Scott employed it in St. Ronan's Well (1823): "'He lies,' answered Lord Etherington, 'so far as he pretends I know of such papers. I consider the whole story as froth—foam, fudge, or whatever is most unsubstantial.'"
This 32 bar reel for four couples, devised by Diane Klann, however, is anything but unsubstantial with its diamond-shaped set and mixing and swirling figures, ending with a petronella!
American-style fudge became widely popular in the late nineteenth century, with recipes spreading rapidly through women's colleges such as Vassar during the 1880s. Later, a rich, pourable version became the essential topping for the ubiquitous mid-century hot fudge sundae. The word "fudge" also enjoyed a second life as a family-friendly substitute for stronger expletives. "Oh, fudge!"
The word found yet another life in the twentieth century through the expression "fudge factor." Engineers, scientists, and mathematicians began using the term in the 1920s and 1930s for a small adjustment added to a calculation to make theory better match reality
Should you host a sweet-treats ceilidh inspired by dance names, this one is sure to please! 🕺 💃 🤎 🤎 🤎 🍬 🍬 🍬 😋
Double Fudge
June 16 celebrates a special treat, fudge (and the Scottish equivalent, tablet)!
Fudge is a type of confectionery which is made by mixing sugar, butter and milk, heating it to the soft-ball stage at 240 °F (116 °C), and then beating the mixture while it cools to make the the signature fudge consistency. Fudge texture lies between fondant, a wetter version of fudge that is used inside soft-center chocolates and the other extreme, rock candy, in which a sugar solution is left for days to form enormous crystals.
While fudge comes in many different flavors, it's usually chocolate. In the US, another kind of fudge is smooth, melted chocolate that can be poured over the top of ice cream! If made with brown sugar instead of white, it is called penuche, also caled creamy praline fudge, and brown sugar fudge candy!
Scottish tablet is the cousin of American style fudge and differs mainly in the texture - tablet has a harder outer layer with a softer inner layer while most fudges are completely soft all the way through.
American-style fudge (containing chocolate) recipes are first found in an 1886 letter written by Emelyn Battersby Hartridge, a student at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. This Vassar fudge recipe became quite popular at the school for years to come, and by 1887, the recipe had spread such that shops on Mackinac Island in Michigan began to produce the first commercial fudge for summer vacationers.
The traditional story of the origin of the interjection "fudge" to mean "lies! nonsense!" traces back to a sailor's retort to anything considered a made up truth, related to one Captain Fudge, "who always brought home his owners a good cargo of lies" (Isaac Disraeli, 1791, citing a pamphlet from 1700). This Captain Fudge, called "Lying Fudge," perhaps helped reinforce this form of the word "fadge" in the sense of "contriving without the necessary materials."
For a European style (non-chocolate) fudge with Scottish whisky, click the tablet below.
Click the dance cribs or description below to link to a printable version of the dance!
