The history of fudge: Did a mistake create a sweet treat?

Food historian Joyce White says fudge is based on a recipe for chocolate caramels, which was very similar. “What probably happened is that there was someone in Baltimore, messed it up, or ‘fadged’ it,” she said. “Fadge is a word that means you messed up. I fadged it, or I fudged it. Nowadays, we use a different F-word to say that, right?” By 1888, that Baltimore recipe was passed along to a student at Vassar College (then all women) in Poughkeepsie, New York. “Women would make fudge in their dorm rooms,” said White, “doing something against the rules, in the late evenings and trying to get away with something not condoned in the rulebook.”