As fall deepened into winter each year, my grandmother would make her special black walnut divinity fudge. The ritual would start when a paper sack of black walnuts would appear at the house—from where, I don’t know—and my grandmother would send my brother and me out to the back patio with a hammer to crack the shells. As we boiled maple syrup, beat egg whites, and added the black walnuts to the mixture with her, the earthy, astringent, and slightly dank aroma of the nuts took my grandmother back to the long-ago woods of her childhood.

The divinity was my great-grandmother Eathel’s Depression-era creation, made from maple syrup, black walnuts, and eggs—ingredients that my great-grandparents produced and gathered themselves on their farm in central Michigan.

One year, my great-grandmother decided to send my grandma around to the neighbors to sell her homemade divinity. Maybe she thought the neighbors wouldn’t be able to refuse a young girl selling candies, or maybe she was too busy to sell them herself. Whatever her reason, her plan backfired. My grandmother had no success selling door-to-door and became tired of rejection. Afraid to return home with all of her divinity unsold, she devised a plan to hide her failure: she would eat the sweets herself. You can probably guess that it didn’t work. When she came home with no candy and no money, her mother was very unhappy. So in the end, my poor grandmother was doubly punished—by her mother and a terrible stomachache.

It’s amazing how three simple ingredients can hold the history of a family and a place. I don’t think I’ve made divinities since before my grandma passed away, which was the year I graduated from high school. Everything about them was so specific to her and her origins. The original version used only maple syrup, but I have adapted the recipe to make it more consistent. Save this for a cool, dry day, preferably when you’re expecting company. No one should eat a tray alone, and you might be tempted.